Omicron-driven shortages hobble U.S. hospitals

Physician Ogechika Alozie, shown at his office in El Paso, Texas, has been unable to get the new antiviral Paxlovid for his Covid-19 patients. (JUSTIN HAMEL FOR STAT)

Covid-19 medications are supposed to keep people out of the hospital, but the scarcity of outpatient Covid treatments is just one element in a cascade inundating hospitals from Boston to El Paso, from Florida to Washington state. Some medications that could neutralize earlier iterations of the coronavirus don’t work well against Omicron, the variant now racing through the population. Hospitals were already short-staffed, the result of pandemic trauma, burnout, and the Great Resignation; now, with alarming numbers of those who remain calling in sick with Covid, there’s a whole new level of backup and strain. Beds can’t be liberated because there aren’t enough workers in rehab centers or nursing homes. In other words, a bad time to need medical care — and an awful time to be providing it, STAT’s Eric Boodman and Isabella Cueto report.

Who's the biggest loser in Medicare's draft plan for a new Alzheimer's drug?

Medicare may have released a plan to restrict access to Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug, but the biggest losers may actually be other drug makers readying treatments for the debilitating disease. Under a draft policy announced by Medicare Tuesday, any company developing a monoclonal antibody — the same type of injectable medicine as the troubled Biogen drug Aduhelm — would have to satisfy the same stiff requirements in order to win Medicare reimbursement. Both Eli Lilly and Roche have such treatments in the works, and Biogen has still two more, developed in partnership with Eisai. STAT reporters Ed Silverman, Rachel Cohrs, and Nicholas Florko sort through the possible scenarios. Read more.

In this commentary, STAT’s Matthew Herper shares his conclusion: “Medicare’s draft plan to cover Alzheimer’s drugs such as Biogen’s embattled Aduhelm only in clinical trials could have a simple but difficult result for the pharmaceutical industry: chaos.”

Ultra-fast DNA sequencing breaks speed record for diagnosing rare genetic diseases

About a year ago, Matthew Kunzman’s heart was failing, despite doctors’ best attempts to bolster it. But the 14-year-old has bounced back in large part due to super-speedy genetic sequencing that pinpointed the cause of his disease and helped doctors decide how to treat it — in just 11 1/2 hours. That speedy diagnosis — faster than any other medical team has previously reported — resulted from a new approach to DNA sequencing to help patients with deadly and rare diseases. Stanford researchers and collaborators reported in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday that they had sequenced 12 seriously ill patients and successfully diagnosed five of them. In all five cases, the information led to tangible changes in how patients were treated. STAT’s Jonathan Wosen explains.

Inside STAT: Is primary care scalable?

The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is a place to hear about the next drug or technology that might send stock prices soaring. But at this year’s conference, investors also entertained pitches from the humble primary care practice. Wielding high net promoter scores and glowing testimonials from patients, upstart companies are engaged in a pitched battle for the future of primary care. In addition to the growing crop of early-stage companies, retail giants Walmart and CVS are also ramping up primary care businesses, as are Amazon and Teladoc, while large health systems are bolstering their own options. The competition is raising a fundamental question: Is primary care, like fast-food or cellular service, a scalable business with products and services that can be delivered via a repeatable corporate formula? Read more in STAT+ from Casey Ross.

Disparities persist in the air we breathe

Air pollution from fine particulate matter has been dropping over the last 20 years, but who you are and where you live still counts. A new study in Nature tracking pollution by ZIP code and mapping it to different populations concludes that Black, Asian, Hispanic, Latino, and low-income people are exposed to higher levels of this form of air pollution known as PM2.5 than white or Native American people. After connecting demographic data from 2000 through 2016 to pollution data in 32,000 ZIP codes, the researchers found that in 2016, for example, the average PM2.5 concentration for the Black population was 14% higher than for the white population and 36% higher than for the Native American population. And lower-income people were exposed to higher average PM2.5 levels than higher-income individuals. The authors suggest their data set might help EPA "better address environmental injustice."

People over 50 report worse mobility after Covid

Even though their Covid infections weren’t bad enough to send them to the hospital, Canadian adults over 50 were left with worse mobility after their illness compared to other people their age living in their own homes, a new study in JAMA Network Open says. In an ongoing survey, the more than 2,500 people who reported probable or confirmed cases in the pandemic’s first wave were more likely than others to say that after Covid, they had more trouble moving around their homes, doing housework, or being physically active. This held true after accounting for factors such as age, sex, and income. “These findings highlight the burden of mild to moderate Covid-19 not requiring hospitalization on physical health in community-living people,” the authors write.

What to read around the web today

The Covid generation: How is the pandemic affecting kids’ brains? Nature
Calling Omicron ‘mild’ is wishful thinking. The Atlantic
A new biotech startup looks to sidestep a key problem with CAR-T cancer therapies. STAT+
Medicaid pays millions for patient transportation. Sometimes the ride never comes. NPR
Telehealth companies are testing the waters with taking on more risk. STAT+