Biden administration starts a Paxlovid reboot

The Biden administration announced a series of initiatives today aimed at increasing the use of antiviral pills to treat Covid-19, with a particular focus on Pfizer’s Paxlovid. The drug made headlines last December when data were released showing it reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 85%. But the use of the drug has been slow, in part because of logistical and supply constraints. Ashish Jha, Biden’s new Covid response coordinator, wasted no time in promising that was about to change. “Paxlovid is extraordinarily effective at preventing bad outcomes,” he tweeted Friday. “We're getting it out to the American people.” The new initiatives include making the antiviral pills available at many more pharmacies, community health centers, and other locations. STAT’s Matthew Herper has more.

U.S. may end up recommending annual Covid boosters, minus evidence they’re needed

A number of vaccine experts are concerned the U.S. may be sleepwalking into a policy of recommending annual Covid-19 vaccine boosters without evidence to show regular top-ups are actually needed. Already, fourth doses for immunocompromised people and those age 50 and older have been authorized, even though neither the FDA nor the CDC has explicitly urged people to get them. There’s a working assumption that another booster will be recommended in the fall in anticipation of increased Covid activity during the cold and flu season. “It’s alarming that there hasn’t been organization around these vital questions, so that we can actually answer them in a very enlightened and data-driven and knowledgeable manner,” Luciana Borio of the Council on Foreign Relations told STAT’s Helen Branswell. “And we end up being stuck with decisions that don’t really make sense.” Read more.

PTSD rates soared when family members couldn't visit ICUs early in the pandemic

Since the pandemic began, we’ve been pained to think about Covid patients isolated in ICUs, fighting for their lives. A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine tells us about family members who couldn't be there with them. Most of them reported symptoms of PTSD in the months following restrictive policies on visits in 2020. The prevalence of these symptoms was roughly twice the rate typically seen after a family member’s ICU stay before the pandemic, and higher scores tracked with greater distrust of practitioners, the researchers found. Limits on visits meant family members couldn’t confirm what they were being told by doctors and nurses because they couldn't see them taking care of their loved ones, study author Timothy Amass told STAT’s Azma Hasina Mulundika.

Closer look: How a missed match in residency pushed this M.D.-Ph.D. into health tech

Travis Hughes at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. (Vanessa Leroy for STAT)

Travis Hughes had been assured by both mentors and peers that he was a front-runner for a super-competitive dermatology residency: He had a double M.D.-Ph.D. degree from Harvard, experience as a clinical scientist at a health tech startup, and a CV with nearly 40 publications and four patents. Still, during Match Week in March, he failed to land a residency slot, along with 7.1% of fourth-year medical students in the U.S. While many in his position were upset, Hughes said he was relieved. His part-time job at a startup had nudged him toward industry. The push from the Match Week was all he needed to set out on this new path. Now, he could forgo the long hours and low pay of residency for a comfortable lifestyle in industry, a vision that put him in good company among life sciences Ph.D.s. STAT’s Tino Delamerced has more.

'Right to try' 2.0 targets bespoke therapies

Do you remember “right to try” laws? About 40 states enacted them before President Trump signed a national bill in 2018 allowing dying patients access to drugs that had cleared early clinical trials but had not received FDA’s blessing. Now the Goldwater Institute is pushing new legislation, soon to become law in Arizona, that would go further, speeding patients’ access to bespoke treatments targeting their own genomes. There’s often no way to do a clinical trial for the singular treatments at the center of the new policy, but medical ethicists and other experts argue the FDA has already set up a program for patients to access these sorts of drugs — and it’s working. “This is a solution seeking a problem,” Holly Fernandez Lynch of the University of Pennsylvania told STAT’s Nicholas Florko.

More adolescents are carrying handguns, especially if white, rural, and higher-income

More young people are carrying handguns, a new survey in Pediatrics reports, adding up to a 41% jump over 18 years. The rate among 12- to 17-year-olds rose from 3.3% in 2002-2006 to 4.6% in 2015-2019, which may seem small, but firearm injuries are still a leading cause of death among children and adolescents, sometimes trading places with car crashes. The increase was uneven: While handgun carriage grew among white (3.1% to 5.3%), rural (4.3% to 6.9%), and higher-income adolescents (2.6% to 5.1%), the rate fell among Black (4% to 3.2%), American Indian/Alaskan Native (6.8% to 4.4%), and lower- income adolescents (4.3% to 3.7%). “Our findings underscore the need to develop intervention programs and policy solutions that are tailored to different subgroups of adolescents,” the authors write.

What to read around the web today

Private equity giant KKR profits while people with severe disabilities suffer abuse and neglect. Buzzfeed
There's no knowing what will happen when Roe falls. The Atlantic
Nkarta studies of engineered natural killer cells show complete remissions in patients with blood cancers. STAT+
Macron win relieves French researchers. Nature
Pharma R&D payments to European researchers are like ‘dark money.’ STAT+