JustCare

Tag: COVID-19

  • Coronavirus: BA.2, the next variant

    Coronavirus: BA.2, the next variant

    Brenda Goodman reports for CNN.com about the latest coronavirus variant, BA.2, which has already surfaced in multiple countries and 47 US states. Just at the point at which we are seeing a decline in Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations, BA.2 is rearing its ugly head. And, some experts believe that it’s uglier than the Omicron variant.

    BA.2 is both spreading more quickly than the Delta variant and likely to be causing more severe illness. Vaccines appear not to work well to combat it, though booster shots do protect people. The data suggest that people with booster shots are 74 percent less likely to be ill after being infected with the virus.

    What’s also concerning about BA.2 is that sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody which works against Omicron, does not appear to work against BA.2.

    The World Health Organization reports that BA.2 is 30 percent more contagious than Omicron. Still, hospitalization rates are significantly higher for people who are not vaccinated, particularly elderly Americans and immunocompromised individuals.

    BA.2 is not fully understood yet. In Denmark, where most people with Covid-19 have BA.2, hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise. In other countries such as South Africa and the UK, where BA.2 has emerged, hospitalizations are declining.

    What can you do to protect yourself and those around you? Keep wearing a mask, preferably a K95 or KN95, even if it is not required, whenever you are in enclosed spaces with others.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Medicare to cover at-home rapid tests

    Coronavirus: Medicare to cover at-home rapid tests

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced that Medicare will cover Covid-19 at-home rapid tests beginning this Spring. Tests will be available from pharmacies at no cost. This decision comes at a time when the US has seen more than 900,000 Covid-19 deaths, and on the heels of a Biden administration requirement for private insurers to cover at-home rapid tests. 

    These at-home tests are extremely important to help people catch the virus early. When symptoms are severe, early detection can lead to early treatment and a far greater likelihood of a good prognosis. But, these at-home tests can easily cost $10 a pop, and many people cannot afford them.

    This is the first time that Medicare will cover an over-the-counter medical product and also the first time that it will cover a product in full. Whether you are enrolled in Traditional Medicare or a Medicare Advantage plan, the rapid tests will be covered. This is an important ruling for people with Medicare, a disproportionate number of whom have died or become extremely sick from the novel coronavirus.

    People with Medicare and others are also eligible for free coronavirus tests at community health clinics, Federally Qualified Health Centers and, in many cases, from health care providers. For a free Covid-19 test near you, click here.

    The new Medicare policy will cover as many as eight at-home rapid tests a month for everyone with Medicare. Of course, you need to be able to find them. And, that’s not always easy.

    In the meantime, the Biden administration is distributing four tests per household free of charge to anyone who signs up on its website, covidtests.gov. Thankfully, the country appears to be over the latest Covid-19 surge and, with any luck, the tests will not be needed in the near future. However, predictions are that this is not the last of the novel coronavirus. Variants will spring up.

    To protect yourself from the virus, do your best to wear a K95 or N95 mask when you are indoors with others and in crowded places. These masks, as distinct from cloth masks, do an excellent job of protecting people from catching the virus.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

     

  • Coronavirus: Booster shots reduce risk of hospitalization

    Coronavirus: Booster shots reduce risk of hospitalization

    The New York Times reports on the value of Covid-19 booster shots in preventing hospitalization, particularly for people 50 and older. Still, everyone, including people who have had booster shots are best-off wearing N95 masks whenever indoors and around other people.

    The Centers for Disease Control just released new data showing that people with booster shots are much less likely to be hospitalized than people who are not vaccinated. Booster shots are also a good weapon against Covid-19 infection to begin with. But, vaccinated or not, you should not be going without a surgical mask, ideally an N95 mask, when around other people indoors.

    People over 50 who have not been vaccinated are 17 times more likely to be hospitalized than people who received two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine. The risk of hospitalization for those unvaccinated is 2.5 times greater still than those who had received a booster shot. Unvaccinated adults between the ages of 50 and 64 have a 44 times greater likelihood of being hospitalized than people who had received the booster shot as well.

    Risk of hospitalization for the unvaccinated over 65 is even higher than for those under 65. People over 65 have a 49 times higher likelihood of hospitalization than people their age who had received a booster.

    Interestingly, getting Covid affords people more protection against the Delta virus than vaccinations, according to the CDC. The CDC has not yet determined the efficacy of booster shots against Omicron and whether getting Omicron delivers more protection than a booster shot.

    But, the CDC has now reported that wearing cloth masks offers far less protection than wearing a surgical mask. And, the Washington Post explains why the best mask to wear to protect yourself against Covid-19 is an N95. In short, it fits snugly to your skin around the edges and is made of a material that blocks the novel coronavirus particles from slipping through it with 95 percent efficacy.

    Everyone can reduce the risk of getting Covid by using an N95 or KN95 mask instead of a cloth mask. N95 masks are now widely available. If you are buying masks, choose those. The Biden administration is now giving out free masks through community health centers (sometimes called FQHCs) and through participating pharmacies, such as CVS and Walmart.  You can visit this CDC webpage to see how to ensure the mask you buy is not counterfeit.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Medicare should pay for at-home rapid tests

    Coronavirus: Medicare should pay for at-home rapid tests

    The conundrum: Older adults, even those who are vaccinated and boosted, are most prone to getting Covid-19. Yet, as of now, Medicare is not covering at-home rapid tests. Michelle Andrews reports for Kaiser Health News on why the Biden administration is requiring corporate insurers to cover these tests but not Medicare.

    The Biden administration now requires all corporate health insurers, including those offering coverage through the state health insurance exchanges, Medicaid and CHIP, to cover eight monthly at-home rapid coronavirus tests. But, people with Medicare do not have coverage for these tests. Medicare laws prevent Medicare from covering self-administered diagnostic tests, like the rapid tests, even though they are so important for containing the pandemic.

    As you likely know, the Covid-19 tests are hard to come by. They are not available at most pharmacies. And, when available, quantities tend to be limited. So, coverage of these tests might not help much for many people.

    Still, everyone, including people with Medicare, are able to get four free rapid at-home tests through the Biden administration. They need only go to  covidtests.gov. They also can get free tests community health centers. This web site has additional information on where to get free Covid-19 tests.

    Medicare covers rapid antigen and PCR testing if performed by a lab at not charge to patients. However, be prepared: In order to get more than one free test a year, you must have a doctor’s order.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: The future of Omicron

    Coronavirus: The future of Omicron

    Megan Molteni reports for StatNews on the future of Omicron. Sadly, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Omicron and its variants could be with us for longer than imaginable, and it could have particularly deadly consequences.

    Experts say that we could easily have six to eight more bad weeks of Omicron ahead of us. Around the world, one group of experts predict three billion new cases by the end of February. People in low-income countries will be at greatest risk.

    At its worst, Omicron will cause massive numbers of people–largely unvaccinated people–to be hospitalized, keeping other people from getting medically necessary treatments and preventive services that are not Covid-related.

    That said, if Omicron infects 40 percent of people world-wide in the next two months, as some predict, it could lead to herd immunity, at least for a time.

    No question that Omicron spreads quickly and does a good job of infecting vaccinated and boosted individuals as well as the unvaccinated. Thankfully, vaccinated individuals seem to have mild symptoms. One new study suggests that Omicron has a higher risk of leading to severe disease in unvaccinated individuals.

    At its worst, Omicron could lead to nearly 350,000 more people dying in the first half of this year, about 60,000 more than in 2021. If Omicron turns out to be less transmissible than Delta but causes a little more serious disease, we would likely see half as many deaths as in 2021.

    Some good news: Three new studies find that Omicron leads to fewer hospitalizations than Delta. But, it could still test our public health system, overrunning our hospitals. Delta was causing 115,000 infections a day in early December.

    President Biden has announced that the administration will distribute 500 million free rapid tests, but that’s less than two a person and hardly enough. He is also planning to deploy military medics to hospitals and use Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to provide testing.

    We don’t yet know what the next variants of Covid will look like, how quickly they will spread, or how severe a toll they will take on people. Scientists are finding that the novel coronavirus mutates in very different ways from the flu.

    Some additional good news. Pfizer’s Covid pill appears to be working, and Pfizer will be manufacturing 120 million pills this year. They should keep people from hospitalization.

    Some less good news. No one thinks Covid is going away. In fact, it is infecting dogs, cats, deer and other wildlife, giving it a perch in the world that cannot be contained.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Covid-19 roundup: What you should know

    Covid-19 roundup: What you should know

    The novel coronavirus has taken an incalculably enormous toll on Americans of all ages, particularly older adults. That said, people with Medicare have better Covid-19 protections than most other people in terms of their coverage and out-of-pocket testing and treatment costs. Here’s what you should know.

    Test and treatment costs can be very high, but Medicare should cover them

    Why the vaccine and the booster are important preventive measures

    Symptoms with and without a vaccine and disability benefits:

    Treatments

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: The nursing home tragedy

    Coronavirus: The nursing home tragedy

    Jay Caspian Kang writes about Covid-19 and the nursing home tragedy in the US in an opinion piece for the New York Times. Nearly 200,000 nursing home and long-term care facility residents have died of Covid-19. After tapering off for a bit, Covid-19 deaths in long-term care facilities are increasing again.

    Nearly one in ten nursing home and long-term care facility residents have died of Covid-19. And, they continue to die. Congress and state lawmakers have taken precious little action to protect them. Indeed, former NYS governor Cuomo inexplicably required nursing homes to admit Covid-19 patients in stable condition post hospital discharge.

    All in, NYS nursing homes took in more than 9,000 residents with Covid. Rather than protecting residents, Governor Cuomo protected nursing home and hospital owners, through an order shielding them from liability for Covid-19 deaths in their facilities. Fortunately, that protection ended back in April 2021. The Cuomo administration also underreported the number of nursing home deaths.

    The nursing home industry is no longer about motherhood and apple pie. Most nursing homes are now owned by large corporations and are part of chains. Quality of care is a serious issue. Often, these nursing homes are understaffed.

    Kang says that nursing homes have always had the ability to contain the spread of the virus in their facilities. But, the for-profit nursing home owners fear losing money when they invest in containing the spread of Covid-19. Local governments, in sharp contrast, are not concerned with delivering profits to shareholders and can prioritize patient safety. Laguna Honda, run by the local government in California, had the staff necessary to keep people from dying and the willingness to respond to emerging issues swiftly, when necessary.

    Kang blames the for-profit nursing home industry “almost entirely” for all the needless nursing home Covid-19 deaths. They have not provided residents with the care they need. And lawmakers have sat quietly on the sidelines while this has happened.

    What’s beyond shocking is that, notwithstanding all these deaths–which some have called “murders”–nursing homes have raked in large profits. There does not appear to be the political will to keep nursing home owners from prioritizing profits, let alone to hold nursing home owners accountable for these deaths.

    It seems that it’s not worth it to lawmakers to act says Kang. The people running these nursing homes are powerful. And, we are an ageist society, with our representatives apparently willing to write off the death of the elderly as inconsequential.

    It’s time we passed laws that increased the rights of nursing home residents and made it costly for nursing home owners to behave negligently towards their residents. Moreover, state and local governments should be able to take control of for-profit nursing homes that are failing their residents, through eminent domain. Kang argues that there is no other solution that will lead nursing home owners to deliver the care people need.

    Currently, a large percentage of the money that Medicaid and Medicare allocate to nursing homes never gets allocated to the care and feeding of residents. Rather, it gets pocketed by the nursing home owners in one way or another. That’s why it is smart to avoid using for-profit chain nursing homes.

    One expert says that the nursing home industry is called the “Syndicate” because it is so corrupt. Whether we can overcome their money, their power, and their political ties is the question.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • People with long Covid struggle to get disability benefits

    People with long Covid struggle to get disability benefits

    Amanda Morris writes for the New York Times on the difficulty people with long-term side effects of Covid are facing getting disability benefits. People with “long Covid” can have serious health issues and might not be able to work. They need disability benefits, including health care and housing.

    The issue is that the Social Security Administration wants proof of long-term disability in order to award benefits. But, the side effects of long Covid are not easy to prove. Often lab tests show that things look normal. People do not have specific medical evidence to support their claims for disability benefits.

    President Biden, for his part, has promised “to make sure Americans with long Covid who have a disability have access to the rights and resources that are due under the disability law.” But, how is long Covid diagnosed without medical evidence? Moreover, to qualify for Social Security disability benefits you need to be able to show that you cannot work for at least a year.

    An estimated three to ten million Americans could have long Covid, according to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These people are still getting care for several different medical conditions long after they were diagnosed with Covid-19.

    To date, about 16,000 Americans have been able to prove that they have long Covid to the Social Security Administration. It’s early days, since it takes about five months for Social Security to make a disability determination. To make matters worse, the Trump Administration underfunded the Social Security Administration. President Biden has proposed that Congress allocate $1.3 billion additional dollars to it.

    Today, about 9.5 million workers and their families receive Social Security disability benefits. Benefits tend to average $1,280 a month. People receiving Social Security disability benefits also qualify for Medicare.

    Of course, if everyone in the US had Medicare, it would be a huge help to people with long Covid. These days, Medicare for all seems more like a dream. Instead, millions of Americans are living a nightmare.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: What do we know about the latest variant?

    Coronavirus: What do we know about the latest variant?

    Andrew Joseph reports for StatNews on a new coronavirus variant, which some believe is even more easily transmissible than the Delta variant. It is called AY.4.2 or Delta Plus. What do we know about it?

    AY.4.2 is still not prevalent in the US. The CDC says that there are fewer than 10 cases reported in its database. But, the CDC does not have nearly as good a handle on different strains of the novel coronavirus as other countries.

    In the United Kingdom, AY.4.2 represents 10 percent of the Covid cases. The UK Health Security Agency reports that it is growing and “increasing in frequency.” Fortunately, it appears that the Covid vaccines are effective against it.

    Much about AY.4.2 remains unknown. Is AY.4.2 better able to attack people’s immune systems than the Delta variant? We don’t yet know. Time will tell whether it is growing in prevalence because of a biological difference or because of the nature of the communities in which it is spreading.

    The evidence will come together when AY.4.2 is around longer and in different countries. Right now, some experts say that it brings with it a similar likelihood of hospitalization and death as the Delta variant.

    It’s also still unclear whether we will see Covid variants that are not Delta-related.

    The US and other countries are leagues behind the United Kingdom in terms of its sequencing system for Covid. So, we don’t know a lot about what’s happening in the US when it comes to Covid variants. The US is reporting an overall decline in Covid transmission rates.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Should you get the Pfizer booster vaccine?

    Coronavirus: Should you get the Pfizer booster vaccine?

    The FDA gave emergency approval to Pfizer’s “booster” vaccine for people over 65 who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 at least six months. And, soon after, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  announced that it supports that decision as well as booster shots for people who have a serious medical condition or work in a high-risk settings.

    In short, about 60 million of the 100 million people who received the Pfizer vaccine and who are at high risk of getting a serious case of Covid-19 are eligible for the booster shot.  The booster is the same Pfizer vaccine as people originally received, just a third one, to boost people’s antibody levels and better protect them.

    Older adults and people with compromised health need vaccine protection. Covid-19 is the deadliest disease in American history, deadlier than the Spanish flu of 1918.

    Pfizer had wanted the booster to be available to all 100 million Americans who had received its vaccine. But, an expert FDA panel did not support Pfizer’s request, nor did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, projections are that booster shots around the world will contribute $26 billion to its bottom line in 2022, PBS reports.

    Should you get a booster if you did not get the Pfizer vaccine? The FDA has not yet given approval for a booster to people who had the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. For that reason, experts have not  recommended a Pfizer booster to people who received the Johnson & Johnson or Moderna vaccines.

    Some experts believe that people who are immunocompromised should get the third vaccine even if it is a different brand from the brand they initially received. But, one FDA representative says there is not enough evidence to know whether it would be as effective as getting a third injection of the same vaccine you originally received.

    Here’s more from Just Care: