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The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved updated Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, putting the new shots on track to reach most Americans in the coming days amid a summer surge of the virus. The jabs target a strain called KP.2, a descendant of the highly contagious omicron subvariant JN.1 that began circulating widely in the U.S. earlier this year. (Constantino, 8/22)

In recent weeks, people have been hospitalized with Covid at a rate nearly twice as high as during the same time last summer. By late July, Covid was killing roughly 600 Americans each week, a substantial drop from this winter but double the number from this spring. The availability of boosters has not translated into actual vaccinations. By spring, only one in five adults had received last year’s updated Covid vaccine. Even older Americans, who are at far greater risk of being severely sickened, largely spurned the shots, with only 40 percent of people 75 and older taking last year’s vaccine. (Mueller and Weiland, 8/22)

AstraZeneca has warned it could relocate its vaccine manufacturing site from the UK to the United States as talks with the new Labour government over plans to cut state aid have become deadlocked, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. (8/23)

After a yearslong lull thanks to Covid-19 precautions like isolation and distancing, whooping cough cases are now climbing back to levels seen before the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far this year, there have been 10,865 cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, nationwide. That’s more than triple the number of cases documented by this time last year, and is also higher than what was seen at this time in 2019. Doctors say these estimates are most likely an undercount, as many people may not realize they have whooping cough and therefore are never tested. (Blum, 8/22)

t first glance, it looks like an unassuming farm. Cows are scattered across fenced-in fields. A milking barn sits in the distance with a tractor parked alongside. But the people who work there are not farmers, and other buildings look more like what you’d find at a modern university than in a cow pasture. Welcome to the National Animal Disease Center, a government research facility in Iowa where 43 scientists work with pigs, cows and other animals, pushing to solve the bird flu outbreak currently spreading through U.S. animals — and develop ways to stop it. (Conlon and Stobbe, 8/23)

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that abortion will not be on the ballot in November, upholding the state’s rejection of a petition to bring an abortion access measure before voters because organizers had failed to submit the required paperwork on time. In a narrow 4-3 ruling, the court’s majority sided with Secretary of State John Thurston (R), who in July rejected a petition submitted by Arkansans for Limited Government that carried over 100,000 signatures because the group had not submitted training certifications for paid canvassers it used. (Wu, 8/22)

A new study from Argentinian researchers has found that the strains of HPV considered high risk because of their links to cancer were not only more common than low-risk strains in a small study population of men, they also appeared to pose a greater threat to sperm quality. The study, published Friday in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, found that high-risk HPV appears to suppress key components of the immune system in the male genital tract. (Ryan, 8/23)

The percentage of teenagers who were up to date on their human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines has fallen dramatically since 2020, according to new federal data released Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends children from ages 11 to 12 receive two doses of the HPV vaccine, given six to 12 months apart, although children can get the vaccine starting at age 9. (Kekatos, 8/22)

Nowhere in the country are fertility treatments so successfully used as in Massachusetts, which almost four decades ago became the first state to require that insurers cover them. Indeed, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has discussed her own use of assisted reproductive technology, told the Globe that she “felt lucky to live in Massachusetts.” (Nickerson, Bryars and Getahun-Hawkins, 8/22)

Kamala Harris focused at length on Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda drafted by Donald Trump's allies. She warned that the policies could have a devastating effect on reproductive health, leading to a nationwide abortion ban and further restrictions to women’s health care. “Simply put, they are out of their minds,” Ms. Harris said. She said that she would “proudly” sign legislation protecting abortion rights into law — a pledge also made by Joe Biden, but one that is a long shot in the current Congress. (Rogers and Epstein, 8/23)

Donald Trump told “Fox and Friends” on Thursday morning that Tim Walz connecting him to Project 2025 was “disgraceful” and throughout the interview, repeatedly said he had “no idea” what it was. The former president also rehashed his criticisms of Walz for Minnesota’s law placing free menstrual products in public school restrooms, describing it as having tampons “available in young men’s bathrooms.” (Ramirez, 8/22)

President Joe Biden and fellow Democratic leaders have spent two years focusing on women with wanted pregnancies who were denied emergency abortion care. The party, now firmly in its Kamala Harris era, is widening the lens. Democrats at their convention this week spotlighted stories of unwanted pregnancies, a long taboo subject in politics. (Messerly and Ollstein, 8/22)

She built a reputation in California as a prosecutor who backed abortion rights, and, as attorney general, Kamala Harris threw her weight behind multiple abortion issues with national consequences. Two standouts include investigating claims that Planned Parenthood sold fetal remains and supporting regulation of anti-abortion pregnancy centers. “As long as I have known her, this has always been a core issue,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu. (Hwang, 8/22)

The night took a heart-wrenching turn as survivors and relatives of people killed by gun violence shared their stories with a rapt and tear-filled audience. Abbey Clements, a teacher who survived the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, talked as her voice broke about the day 20 first grade children and six of her colleagues were killed. (Messerly, 8/22)

Not long after the rape and beating of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989, Donald J. Trump took out full-page newspaper ads about the case, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. The five Black and Latino teenagers accused in the attack — Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Antron McCray, known as the Central Park Five — served years in prison before being cleared in 2002 by DNA evidence and the confession of another man. But Mr. Trump has refused to apologize. (Mays, 8/22)

A 2020 study estimated that as many as 2.9 million children and adolescents in North America have nonverbal learning disability, or NVLD, which affects a person’s spatial-visual skills. The number of people who receive a diagnosis is likely much smaller than those living with the disability, said Santhosh Girirajan, the T. Ming Chu professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and professor of genomics at Penn State. (Sullivan, 8/22)

The leader of a progressive group said Medicare for All – previously understood as a top priority for those on the left wing of the Democratic Party and advocated for by then-Sen. Kamala Harris in her brief 2020 presidential run – can wait. "There's a time and place for every policy," Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) co-founder Adam Green told Fox News Digital. (Johnson, 8/22)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Trump Drastically Inflates Annual Fentanyl Death Numbers

Former President Donald Trump claimed at a recent campaign rally that more than 300,000 Americans are dying each year from the synthetic opioid drug fentanyl, and that the number of fentanyl overdoses was the “lowest” during his administration and has skyrocketed since. ... Trump’s figures appear to have no basis in fact. Government statistics show the number of drug overdose deaths per year is hovering around 100,000 to 110,000, with opioid-related deaths at about 81,000. (Gardenswartz, 8/23)

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., the second-oldest member of the House who brought an in-your-face Jersey attitude to the chamber, died Wednesday at age 87. Pascrell had been hospitalized at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in his hometown of Paterson since July 14. It’s the second time this year a sitting New Jersey lawmaker has died in office. (Racioppi and Friedman, 8/21)

Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement officer accused bankrupt hospital operator Steward Health of neglecting one of its hospitals and threatening to close the facility if authorities don’t immediately provide $1.5 million in government funding. Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle A. Henry said in a Thursday court filing that her office is considering Steward’s request to provide Sharon Hospital support but requires detailed financial information and more time to secure approval to do so. (Randles, 8/22)

A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Thursday ordered Steward Health Care not to take immediate action to close a Pennsylvania hospital that is perilously short on funds, while allowing the company to proceed with two just-announced closures in Ohio. (Knauth, 8/22)

Evolent Health is in talks with private equity firms and healthcare services providers for a potential sale, in a process that kicked off after it received takeover interest, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Private equity firms TPG, CD&R and KKR are among the parties that have expressed interest in a deal for healthcare software provider Evolent, which has a market value of about $3.8 billion, the sources said. TPG was one of the early investors in Evolent. (Vinn and Sen, 8/22)

San Antonio will soon be home to the third largest comprehensive public research university in the state. The University of Texas System Board of Regents voted Thursday to combine the University of Texas at San Antonio and UT Health San Antonio — the system’s health institution in the city — by 2025, putting the 35,000-student university and UT Health San Antonio’s six health care schools under one umbrella. (McGee, 8/22)

Three staff neurologists are leaving Mission Hospital by the end of September, potentially leaving only two to provide critical care to hundreds of patients at the Asheville flagship hospital and across western North Carolina, including many who have suffered strokes. (Jones, 8/23)

A Detroit-area doctor recorded nude women and children with hidden cameras in private places such as hospitals, bathrooms and the changing area at a swim club over a period of at least six years, law enforcement officials in Michigan said this week. The activities that led to charges against Dr. Oumair Aejaz, an internal medicine doctor, were reported to the authorities by his wife, Sheriff Michael J. Bouchard of Oakland County said. (Sanders, 8/22)

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has reassigned two top executives at the VA hospital in Buffalo after hearing complaints that local veterans experienced delays in receiving critical treatments. “Upon learning of concerns raised by clinicians about local leadership and instances of delayed care, VA immediately transferred the medical center director and the chief of staff out of clinical- and Veteran-facing positions pending the results of an investigation,” VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement Wednesday morning. (8/22)

The Department of Veterans Affairs has established a new website and call center to help veterans who think they've been defrauded or charged exorbitant or illicit fees -- former service members such as Navy veteran David Rouse, who recently learned he owes a company nearly $9,000 for helping with his disability claim. (Kime, 8/22)

Columbia University’s medical school announced on Thursday that one of its graduates was donating $400 million, the largest gift in the medical school’s history. The gift, from P. Roy and Diana Vagelos, would expand biomedical research at a school that already bears their name, after they donated $250 million in 2017. It comes at a critical time for the university, which spent much of the last school year convulsed by protests over the Israel-Hamas war. The university’s handling of those protests led some major donors to pause their contributions to the school. (Goldstein, 8/22)

A New Orleans-based system of hospitals and clinics serving Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is working with a New York nonprofit to wipe out $366 million in medical debt for about 193,000 needy patients. The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported Wednesday that the deal involving Ochsner Health was arranged by Undue Medical Debt, a donor-funded organization that negotiates with hospitals, doctors’ offices and ambulance services to purchase and erase the outstanding medical debt of those least able to afford it. (8/22)

Florida KidCare, a childhood insurance option for some parents who lost coverage, is failing to offset the coverage gap left by the Medicaid unwinding. (Paul, 8/22)

Transgender Texans can no longer change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to match their gender identity, according to a state policy rolled out this week. Advocacy groups say the new rule further harms a vulnerable community already targeted by anti-trans efforts in the state and around the country. (Kaur, 8/22)

Smokers living in apartments, condos and townhomes in Carlsbad will now have to think twice about lighting up inside their homes. The beach city Tuesday became the first in San Diego County to expressly ban smoking and vaping of cannabis and nicotine products inside all local multifamily residential buildings. (Fry, 8/22)

The New Jersey state attorney general is changing the state's use-of-force policy after two fatal police shootings of people experiencing mental health crises. Attorney General Matthew Platkin says this is the first statewide policy of its kind and will require all police departments in New Jersey to coordinate with mental health professionals when they're responding to a call for a barricaded person, a situation he says overwhelmingly involves people experiencing an emotional crisis and is the most likely call to end in an injury. (Bauman, 8/22)

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Thursday accused Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft of thwarting an executive order to ban various forms of the cannabis compound THC over “hurt feelings” because Parson endorsed Ashcroft’s GOP rival in the recent gubernatorial primary Ashcroft lost. Ashcroft did not sign-off on Parson’s August emergency executive order banning the sale of unregulated THC substances. Recreational and medical marijuana are both legal in Missouri, but Parson’s executive order was aimed at particular THC compounds that aren’t regulated, including Delta-8. (Ballentine, 8/22)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Disability Rights Activist Pushes Government To Let Him Participate In Society

Garret Frey refuses to be sidelined. Frey has been paralyzed from the neck down for more than 37 of his 42 years. He has spent decades rejecting the government’s excuses when he and others with disabilities are denied the support they need to live in their own homes and to participate in society. The Iowan won a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999, after his school district refused to pay for the care he needed to continue attending high school classes in Cedar Rapids. (Leys, 8/23)

A diagnostics company has agreed to stop selling two questionable blood tests as part of a settlement with a consumer watchdog that accused the firm of using “false and misleading advertising” to promote the products. (Boodman, 8/23)

Buzzy gene-editing startup Tome Biosciences is floundering, just nine months after launching with $213 million in funding, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the matter. (Mast and DeAngelis, 8/22)

One person felt a sensation of “slowly floating into the air” as images flashed around. Another recalled “the most profound sense of love and peace,” unlike anything experienced before. Consciousness became a “foreign entity” to another whose “whole sense of reality disappeared.” These were some of the firsthand accounts shared in a small survey of people who belonged to an unusual cohort: They had all undergone a near-death experience and tried psychedelic drugs. (Nuwer, 8/22)

An Indonesian court ordered two local companies to pay up to 60 million rupiah ($3,850) to each family whose children died of an acute kidney injury or were seriously injured after consuming toxic cough syrup. (Widianto, 8/23)

The privately-held Escientia Advanced Sciences makes intermediate chemicals and active ingredients for export to the United States and other Western countries. (Sadam and Patel, 8/22)

Alzheimer's patients in Britain's state-run health service are unlikely to get access to Eisai and Biogen's new Leqembi drug, after it was approved on Thursday by the country's regulator but deemed too expensive for wide use. (Fick, 8/22)

Elon Musk's brain technology startup Neuralink said its implant, designed to allow paralyzed patients to use digital devices by thinking alone, is working well in a second trial patient. The company said the patient, identified as Alex, did not face issues of "thread retraction", unlike Noland Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient who received the implant in January. (8/22)

The use of artificial intelligence in hospitals is ramping up so fast — and with such little transparency — that it is impossible to track how any given product is impacting the cost or quality of care. Whether AI is monitored at all is entirely up to individual health systems. (Ross, 8/23)

The European Commission has asked EU member countries to indicate whether they will donate mpox vaccines to Africa — and how many — by the end of August. France has already pledged 100,000 vaccines to Africa, to be donated via the EU. (O'Neill, 8/23)

“If countries have stockpiles that they’re not willing to share, then we are not going to be able to stop the next pandemic,” said Helen Rees, the chair of the World Health Organization’s African advisory group on immunization. “There needs to be a bit of a wake-up call to countries that are better resourced, that do have these vaccines and diagnostics, that very early on there needs to be sharing.” (Kew and Burden, 8/23)

The mpox case in a European traveler from Africa to Thailand that was reported yesterday has now been confirmed as caused by clade 1b, the deadly strain that has spread widely in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries. The patient is a 66-year-old European man who had arrived in Thailand last week from an unspecified African country in which mpox spreading, Reuters reported. Thailand's health ministry said his travels to Thailand included a stop in an unnamed Middle Eastern nation. (Wappes, 8/22)

Countries in Asia have ramped up precautions after cases of the new and deadlier strain of mpox, known as Clade 1b, was recently found outside the African continent. (Shan, 8/23)

Singapore has detected 13 cases of mpox Clade 2 infections this year, the health ministry said in a bulletin on Thursday. To date, all mpox infections in the city state have been the "less severe" Clade 2 infections, it added. (8/22)

An Aug. 18 Threads video shows a large crowd in a grassy field and several buildings in the distance. "Huge lines to get tested for monkeypox in Omaha, Nebraska. How are there this many stupid people in one place," reads the post. Our rating: False. The video doesn't show people lined up to get tested for mpox, formerly known as monkeypox. It shows a line for a campaign rally held by vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz on Aug. 17 in La Vista, Nebraska, a city spokesperson said. (Byik, 8/22)

The average age of hip- and knee-replacement patients is getting younger. As average life expectancy ticks up, many Americans are no longer willing to sacrifice decades doing their favorite activities, such as skiing, hiking or playing pickleball, to sit in pain, doctors say. And staying sporty into your 50s and 60s is good for your physical and mental health. “In the past, people would just say, ‘I don’t run, I have bad knees,’” says Dr. Ran Schwarzkopf, an orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone. Now, he says, “they’re not willing to accept limitations that arthritis gives.” (Janin, 8/20)

He spent $350,000 on private flights to a treatment facility in Switzerland. He lived for a month in a detox center by the beach, and shook for 36 days straight as he recounted his traumas at a therapeutic healing center in Florida. He went to hundreds of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He had himself hypnotized. Matthew Perry tried countless methods to get well. As the actor became a generational icon on the TV show “Friends,” behind the scenes he struggled to find a treatment for his yearslong addiction to drugs and alcohol. (Schwartzel and O'Brien, 8/20)

In The Weeds works to reduce substance abuse and improve mental health among restaurant employees in Four Corners region. Truett “Blaine” Bailey concocted the idea for the organization in 2018 after being arrested in Arkansas. At the time, Bailey was carrying 0.002 grams of hallucinogenic substances at the scene of a bicycle accident. He was elevating his cousin’s bloody head and taking first aid instructions from the 911 operator while he waited for the ambulance. (Stevens, 8/21)

Pfizer expects Seagen drugs, known as antibody drug conjugates or ADCs, to generate $10 billion in annual sales by 2030. The company needs a win. One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies by sales, Pfizer had enjoyed unusual gains during the pandemic thanks to its Covid-19 vaccine, developed with BioNTech. Revenue in 2022 topped $100 billion. But after the pandemic emergency receded, Pfizer miscalculated demand for its Covid-19 vaccine and drug. Sales from several new drug launches underwhelmed, and the company’s first stab at a closely watched weight-loss pill faltered. (Hopkins, 8/19)

The sugar industry is facing pressure to clean up its supply chains and improve oversight after revelations that women in India, the world’s second-largest sugar producer, work in debt bondage and are coerced into getting hysterectomies. In the wake of the report, a group of labor leaders in India went on a three-day hunger strike recently to demand better working conditions. One of the companies that buys sugar in Maharashtra, Coca-Cola, quietly met with Indian government leaders and sugar suppliers last month to discuss responsible harvesting. And Bonsucro, a sugar industry body that sets standards, said that it would create a human rights task force. (Rajagopalan, 8/22)

Appalled by the food options available to those seeking to lose weight, he developed a form of nouvelle cuisine for dieters at a spa in southwestern France. (Grimes, 8/19)

Have you ever had a medical procedure or medication denied by insurance? Then spent days, weeks, even months on the phone trying to understand why? Well, that just became harder. Now artificial intelligence is in the mix, making decisions about what to approve and deny. Often, the reasons are unclear even to the insurance companies. (Mara Mellits, 8/22)

I’m a doctor and epidemiologist, so you might expect me to be religious about preventative care: yearly visits to my primary care physician, that sort of thing. But I know we can’t prevent most disease and a lot of what we do in medicine doesn’t add value and sometimes even causes harm. So instead, I practice a seemingly radical but necessary idea for getting the best from medicine while avoiding excesses. I like to think of it as medical minimalism. (Daniel Morgan, 8/23)

Several years ago, while on a road trip, I ordered the now-discontinued spaghetti and meatballs during a pitstop at Denny’s. When the plate came out, I thought there was no way I could finish the massive platter, but then I did because it was right in front of me — even though I knew exactly what was going on. (Sophia Hua, 8/23)

Gus Walz has, according to his parents, a nonverbal learning disorder, A.D.H.D. and an anxiety disorder, all of which they regard not as a setback but as his “secret power,” that makes him “brilliant” and “hyperaware.” I know exactly what they mean. (Tina Brown, 8/23)

Things weren’t supposed to go this way. The drug company Lykos Therapeutics had spent much of this year expecting to vault to meteoric heights. It had sent an application to the Food and Drug Administration seeking approval to use MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Lykos expected F.D.A. approval; it was banking on it. (Caty Enders, 8/23)