Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Though Covid And RSV Decline, Flu Levels Stay High Across US
Flu levels remain elevated, with increases in half of US regions, as COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) levels stayed on downward trends, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest weekly updates. Though the national test positivity declined a bit, to 14.8% of respiratory virus samples, the percentage of outpatient visits for flulike illness held steady at 4.5%, the CDC said in its weekly FluView update. (Schnirring, 2/23)
Children born in October and vaccinated against influenza in that month are both more likely to be vaccinated against flu and less likely to be diagnosed as having influenza than children born in other months, according to a new study聽The BMJ. The observational study is based on insurance records of 800,000 US children ages 2 to 5 years old who received flu vaccines from 2011 to 2018. Researchers analyzed rates of diagnosed influenza among children by birth month, and found that those with October birthdays had the lowest rates. (Soucheray, 2/23)
Also 鈥
The complexity of both the disease and the drug development system, not to mention the difficulty of getting doctors to believe them and insurance to pay for visits, has left long COVID patients feeling alone and adrift. Americans are paying a price. According to a 2022 analysis, long COVID costs the American economy at least $200 billion a year because of lost productivity, lost wages and medical costs. (Cuevas and Weintraub, 2/26)
Many young people have reported having poor mental health during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Their experiences are affirmed by a new study finding that the rate of prescribing antidepressants to this group also spiked during the same period. (Rogers, 2/26)
An 鈥渁pocalyptic鈥 mass mortality event that has left thousands of sea lions and elephant seals dead on the beaches of South America is raising alarms among some California sea mammal experts who fear similar scenes could play out along California鈥檚 Pacific Coast and other continents as the H5N1 bird flu continues its march across the globe. ... Up until now, the ability of the virus to jump from mammal to mammal has been limited, but the scale of infections and deaths in South America has raised troubling questions about whether something has changed. (Rust, 2/25)
