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The CDC updated its public health guidance this week for fully vaccinated people. Meg Tirrell has the details. I spoke with the CEO of BioNTech this week about the company's vaccine with Pfizer and the outbreak in India. The FDA is also proposing a ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes. More details below.
KEY UPDATE: The annual Healthy Returns Summit is coming up on May 11th. Meg Tirrell speaks to CDC's Dr. Rochelle Walensky for a key Covid update, along with Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks talking transforming health care. Bertha Coombs talks mental health care with Centene CEO Michael Neidorff, and dives into the future of medicine and telehealth with Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic. PLUS, the next frontier in treating mental health: Psychedelics. We'll talk to former NHL player-turned health care CEO Daniel Carcillo, Apeiron's Christian Angermayer and MassGen's Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics director Dr. Sharmin Ghaznavi. Jim Cramer closes the day with Abbott CEO Robert Ford, exploring how today's learnings will inform the innovation tomorrow. The conversations this year will be future focused and not to be missed. Reserve your spot.
| | CDC's mask guidance comes as vaccination rate tapers | The agency's new guidance this week, which says people who are fully vaccinated can safely go mask-less outdoors, as long as they're not in a crowd, was designed to show the 45% of American adults who haven't been vaccinated yet that there are good reasons to do so. It comes as the pace of vaccinations, which averaged 3.3 million shots per day in mid-April, has now dropped by 20%. Experts like Dr. Eric Topol said incentives are the way to go to convince more people to get vaccinated – so while from the CDC it's getting to take off the mask, states have their own incentives: in Connecticut, free drinks, and in West Virginia, $100 savings bonds for people under 35.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | BioNTech CEO confident vaccine works against variant identified in India | BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told me this week he is "confident" the German drugmaker's Covid-19 vaccine with U.S. partner Pfizer is effective against a coronavirus variant first identified in India. B.1.617, which contains two key mutations that have been found separately in other variants, was first spotted in India, where it's thought by some to be behind a recent surge in new Covid-19 cases there. Sahin said the company has already tested its two-dose vaccine against similar "double mutants." Based on those data, Sahin said he feels assured the shot will still be protective.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | Most U.S. employers to require proof of vaccination, survey finds | A new survey out of Arizona State University and The Rockefeller Foundation that surveyed 957 facilities across 24 U.S. industry sectors found that 60% of U.S. employers will require proof of vaccination from their employees. The survey also found that if employees fail to comply with vaccination policy, 35% said disciplinary actions are on the table, up to and including possible termination. Most employees, about 51%, would prefer to wait until the government or health agencies allow them to return to work, and about 47% said they would return to in-person work when the entire workforce is vaccinated.
-Richard Mendez | | | | mRNA vaccines prevent hospitalizations in seniors | The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines are 94% effective at preventing hospitalizations among fully vaccinated adults ages 65 and older, according to a real-world study published this week by the CDC. The two-dose mRNA vaccines were also found in the study to be 64% effective at preventing hospitalizations in the elderly who received just one shot. The CDC study provides more evidence on the benefits of getting vaccinated against the virus. It evaluated 417 hospitalized adults across 14 states from January to March.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | FDA to propose ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes | The FDA announced this week it will propose a ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes in the United States, which would be a huge blow to future tobacco sales. Menthol is the last allowable flavor for cigarettes. According to the FDA, menthol cigarettes have been disproportionately used by youth, people of color and low-income communities. If implemented, the proposal would be a huge win for anti-tobacco advocates who have long seen flavored cigarettes as a way for consumers to be introduced to smoking.
-Katie Tsai | |
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