JustCare

Tag: Vaccine

  • Health care: Where’s the data?

    Health care: Where’s the data?

    If we’ve learned anything during this novel coronavirus pandemic, it’s that the data matters. We need data to know what’s working and not working in our health care system, and how to fix problems. Not making data a priority is tantamount to ignoring issues of equity and access to care. And, yet, a national electronic health care data system does not yet seem to be either a Congressional or Biden administration priority.

    Rachana Pradhan and Fred Schulte report for Kaiser Health News that the government is not even collecting important data about the people receiving COVID vaccinations. As a result, we don’t know who has received and who is receiving the vaccine. We don’t know whether people less in need are getting the vaccine ahead of health care workers or the extent to which minority populations are being discriminated against.

    President Biden recognizes that data matters. Yet, the federal government is literally spending trillions of dollars on health care, including on the vaccine, and it has little data to show for it, except in traditional Medicare. If the goal is to promote racial and social equity, to address issues of discrimination in health care, to ensure that critical treatments are available throughout the country, where they are needed, data must be a top priority.

    Right now, the available data reveal that Black Americans are not getting vaccinated at the same rate as whites. But, the data is limited. And, it’s hard to know where vaccinations are needed to reach herd immunity.

    Each state has a vaccine registry, but the sophistication of the registry varies by state. It’s inexcusable that vaccination data collection is not standardized and, in this technological era, states are not collecting and reporting to HHS all the needed data. It’s beyond inexcusable that registries do not even exist for drugs or medical equipment; when equipment is defective or drugs are causing harmful side effects, the data is generally not available.

    Real-time data does not exist for health care services, including vaccinations. There is no national public health system in charge of data. Moreover, each of the 64  immunization registries that collects vaccination data is siloed, unable to connect with one another.

    The CDC wants the name, address, sex, birthday, race, ethnicity and vaccine site for every person vaccinated. It does not ask for occupation, so few states collect that information. And race and ethnicity information is often missing. In many states, half the time, race and ethnicity information is not collected.

    Electronic health records companies that provide software to hospitals and other facilities said they are scrambling to modify software to accommodate data reporting requirements that vary by state.

    There are plans in place to invest in better data collection at the national level, when it comes to vaccines. But, really, data collection only for vaccines? For our individual and collective health, we need a single national system collecting real-time time that flows directly to the appropriate federal government agency.

    We can learn a lot about strengths and deficiencies in our health care system through a national electronic database. We could develop plans to address deficiencies. You have to wonder why Congress and the Biden administration are not making it data collection and reporting a priority.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: How to get the vaccine?

    Coronavirus: How to get the vaccine?

    Now that the COVID-19 vaccine has been approved, if you’re like me, you probably called your doctor and your friends to find out how you could ensure that you and the older Americans you love get the vaccine as soon as possible. Here’s what I have learned:

    There’s not a lot of information available on how to get the vaccine. When it is available at a given location, it’s a race to schedule a vaccine appointment, not fun and not fair to people who are not equipped to race. There’s also a question of whether you’re even eligible in your state.

    Most states are making the vaccine available to people 65 and over. The problem is scheduling for people who are aging in place. If you’re not up and ready to go online when appointments become available, you likely will lose out.

    My 98-year old father’s geriatrician told me that she did not know when the vaccine would be available to him. At the same time, she said she wanted him to have it as soon as possible. Even though he seemed safe at home, his caregiver is out and about and a vector.

    My dad got lucky. A couple of days later, the doctor sent all of her patients a link to a website on which we could schedule a vaccine appointment. Her office also called to schedule an appointment for my dad. But, don’t count on your doctor’s office calling you.

    President Biden has said that 100 million vaccines will be administered in his first 100 days in office. Biden plans to increase vaccine supplies, get them out to the states and provide the states with the resources needed to administer the vaccines as swiftly as possible. It’s a pretty straightforward plan that has not been in place during the Trump administration.

    So, the good news is that while supplies are not what they need to be at the moment, if you’re over 65, you should be able to get vaccinated in the next three months. The bad news is that, except at the Mayo Clinic, people with serious health conditions are likely to have the same access to the vaccine as everyone else their age and it’s still a struggle to schedule an appointment.  Here’s what Judith Graham of Kaiser Health News recommends you do:

    • Call your doctor and hospital to see whether there is a way for you to register for the vaccine with them, once it is available.
    • Check on local government health department websites for information about scheduling a vaccine in your state. Every state has a covid-19 hotline. You likely will need to be tenacious and patient. But, you might be able to get someone to schedule an appointment for you over the phone.
    • Call your local pharmacy to see what it recommends. Some pharmacies are administering the vaccine on site.
    • Call your state health insurance assistance program for free help signing up for the vaccine. If you can’t get help from the SHIP directly, the SHIP might be able to refer you to an agency that can help. Click here for the your SHIP’s contact information.
    • If you’re a vet, call the department of Veterans Affairs to see if you can get the vaccine through the VA.
    • The silver lining of not being at the front of the line is that the vaccination process should be smoother than it has been by the time you’re scheduled for a vaccine. Lots of people who have been vaccinated already express worry about being exposed to COVID waiting to get the vaccine. Some sites have not done as good a job as one would like at ensuring social distancing and streamlining the process.
    • Keep in mind that vaccine supplies likely will arrive in batches every several days. So, don’t give up trying if you are not able to schedule an appointment right away or supplies run out in your area.
    • And, when you do go to your appointment or go anywhere else where others are gathered, wear two masks, ideally one K95 or N95 mask. The new strains of the novel coronavirus appear to spread more easily. Cloth masks are better than nothing, but they don’t provide as good protection as the K95 and N95 masks.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: How it most often spreads and the immunity it offers

    Coronavirus: How it most often spreads and the immunity it offers

    Scientists are learning more about the novel coronavirus–how it most often spreads, why it affects people differently, and the immunity it offers to future infection. Here’s the latest:

    Who’s most likely to spread the virus? What’s particularly dangerous about the novel coronavirus is that, more often than not, people who have no symptoms, spread it. The latest data suggest that nearly six in ten COVID-19 cases stem from people who were asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. That is why you need to practice social distancing, wear a mask and wash your hands frequently, even when you are around others who appear completely healthy.

    Who is most likely to have mild symptoms? The Journal of Internal Medicine found that the vast majority of mild COVID-19 cases caused people to lose their sense of taste and smell, “anosmia.” Mild cases are those in which people do not contract pneumonia or lose oxygen. Some scientists posit that people with mild symptoms might have more antibodies targeted at stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus than people who have more serious symptoms. People with more serious symptoms tend not to lose their sense of taste or smell. And, happily, about eight in ten people who lose their sense of taste and smell regain it within eight weeks of getting the virus. All but one in 20 people regain these senses within six months.

    Immunity and the vaccine: If you do get COVID-19, new research, published in Science, finds that you should have strong immunity for at least eight months and likely for many years. Moreover, once you get the vaccine, you should not require multiple booster shots.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Plan for the vaccine!

    Coronavirus: Plan for the vaccine!

    Right now, there’s a a lot of talk about who will get the vaccine first. Health care workers, essential workers, poor people, older adults? Every state will likely roll out the vaccine differently. Here’s what you should consider:

    The first batch of vaccines that will be shipped out in the next several days will be small. The CDC is recommending that these vaccines go to health care workers and the frailest older adults at highest risk, living in nursing homes and other care facilities. Most states are expected to comply with that recommendation.

    After that, it’s possible that the next batch of vaccines will be large. If it is, states might not need to prioritize among health care workers, essential workers, poor people and older adults. There will be enough for everyone.

    Let’s hope that’s the case and plan for it. By some accounts, 70 percent of the population are essential workers. Not all of them are in contact with lots of people. But, 42 percent of Americans are essential workers who are on the front lines every day. So, it likely wouldn’t be possible to provide vaccines to all of them at once.

    If you or someone you love is over 65, consider making an appointment with your primary care doctor now for a vaccine in January. Worst case scenario, it is not yet available to you and you move the appointment back a couple of weeks. Best case scenario, you are set.

    Otherwise, it could be the case that the vaccine is available but that you can’t get an appointment for it. You don’t want to face that situation if you can avoid it.

    Keep in mind that the CDC will recommend who gets vaccine priority. But, governors in each state, along with state health officials, will have the ultimate say as to who gets vaccinated first in their states.

    Remember that you will need two doses of the vaccine to be protected!

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Should your dentist be able to give you a Covid vaccine?

    Should your dentist be able to give you a Covid vaccine?

    The COVID-19 vaccine is on the verge of approval. Should your dentist and eye doctor be able to administer the vaccine? Rachel Bluth reports for Kaiser Health News that dentists and optometrists are making the case that it would be far easier for you to get the vaccine and help ensure everyone is vaccinated.

    The data and evidence suggest that it should not only be physicians who administer the vaccine. As it is, pharmacists are allowed to administer the flu shot and the shingles vaccine. Why are they any better equipped to administer a vaccine than a dentist or optometrist?

    Dentists already deliver injections. Delivering the COVID vaccine is not complicated. So, why not let dentists deliver the vaccine and help maximize uptake?

    Moreover, each year lots of people see a dentist without ever seeing a doctor. More than 31 million people visited the dentist in 2017 but not a doctor.

    The American Association of Dental Boards reports that more than 25 states are looking into having dentists give people the COVID vaccine. The state of Oregon already allows dentists to provide vaccines to their adult and child patients after undergoing a training and certification program. And, Minnesota and Illinois allow dentists to give adult patients flu shots.

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services supports expanding the number of health care providers who can administer the COVID vaccine. The dentists and eye doctors make a compelling case as to why their ability to provide the COVID vaccine will be a service to their patients. Dentists and eye doctors also would benefit some financially.

    Some states have previously expanded the array of health care workers who could deliver a vaccine for a temporary period. They allowed nursing students, midwifes and emergency medical technicians to deliver the flu vaccine during the H1N1 pandemic.

    Some argue the more the merrier when it comes to having the authority to deliver a vaccine. The COVID vaccine is pretty easy to administer and low-risk. But, approvals take time, so it is not likely that too many people other than physicians and pharmacists will be able to administer the COVID vaccine this go-round.

    N.B. No one appears to object to dentists and optometrists delivering vaccines. If approved to give the vaccine, health care providers will have to gauge the number of vaccines to buy and how to store them properly under special conditions. If they buy too many, they will be stuck with them. It would be against their financial interest.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Are hospitals prepared for the flu season?

    Coronavirus: Are hospitals prepared for the flu season?

    Now that we are more than eight months into the novel coronavirus, you might think that hospitals in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, would have the supplies they need to provide health care services through the flu season. HealcareDive reports that you might want to think again.

    Hospitals are doing better when it comes to personal protective equipment for their workers, but they are likely to struggle to secure the supplies they need to address the flu and COVID-19 this fall. Many will not be prepared for an influx of patients.

    The federal government now has a Strategic National Stockpile. And, many states are requiring hospitals to stockpile PPE. But, these requirements could end up creating shortages, if the need is in other locations. They also cost hospitals a lot of money.

    Right now, accessing the stockpiles is challenging. There is no good coordination.  Hospitals do not know who has what or how much inventory. And, there are no rules for determining who should be able to access the stockpiles and under what circumstances.

    The problem is bigger than hospitals systems or regions of the US or even the entire nation. It extends to Europe and Asia. The global supply chain is weak. Time well tell the size of the problem as we get deeper into flu season and the novel coronavirus continues to rage.

    On top of that, one in five hospital executives are right now extremely concerned about their hospitals’ financial viability. Another half of hospital executives are moderately concerned. They will remain concerned until there is a COVID-19 vaccine.

    The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that hospital admissions are falling again. They are 10 percent lower than projected. And, of course, that affectsFlu their bottom lines.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: Why are older adults most at risk?

    Coronavirus: Why are older adults most at risk?

    You might be wondering why it is that older adults are most likely to be at risk if they get COVID-19. It’s largely about our immune systems. Veronique Greenwood reports for The New York Times on how our immune systems lose immune cells as we age, causing greater inflammation.

    With the novel coronavirus, the greatest worry is for people over 80. They are at literally hundreds of times’ greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than younger people. Part of the reason is that they tend to have more health conditions, so their systems are compromised and vulnerable.

    People over 80 are also at particular risk because of how our immune system evolves as it ages. We need our immune systems to trigger inflammation that harms or weakens the virus, but not to overreact. Our immune system can also address cells in our body that are damaged.

    But, as we age, our immune system is not able to do the work it once did, Instead, it is in a chronic alert state, overreacting. In addition, older cells appear to evolve as we age, and they release inflammatory substances, which can be harmful.

    Older adults are more likely to be frail as a result of these older cells that raise levels of immune proteins. Even 65-year olds who are healthy and not frail usually have higher immune protein levels.

    As Greenwood explains it, older people’s cells are in “inflammatory chaos,” making it harder to fight off a virus. Their immune systems are not likely to react to the virus as they would have when they were younger. Instead, too many immune messengers are activated, which can cause organ failure.

    So, how effective will a COVID-19 vaccine be for older people? Some people believe that vaccines do not always work as well for older people as for younger people because older people’s immune systems do not react as they once did. There is reason for concern that the COVID-19 vaccine will not work as well for older people.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Coronavirus: How to transform our broken prescription drug sector for the public good

    Coronavirus: How to transform our broken prescription drug sector for the public good

    Dozens of organizations have signed on to a letter that explains how to transform our broken prescription drug sector for the public good. Without major change in the prescription drug sector, we will be hard-pressed to effectively address this pandemic and future public health emergencies or to meet people’s individual medication needs.

    In summary, the letter lays out four interventions:

    1. Codifying open science practices that speed up innovation, lower costs, and strengthen the evidence base on which our medicines system rests;
    2. Creating the ability for the public sector to undertake pharmaceutical innovation and production of essential medicines;
    3. Using the full power of compulsory licensing that would allow the government or other pharmaceutical companies to manufacture patented drugs in order to ensure access to essential medicines;
    4. Turning the vaccine industry into a public agency to assure its products are available to all.

    Here’s the letter: Far too many people have suffered and died because our medicines and medical products system was not prepared to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with prompt and universal access to reliable tests, treatments, and vaccines. Governments, non-profits, and industry in the U.S. and around the world are working furiously to catch up. But their efforts have been hampered by fundamental flaws in our profit-driven pharmaceutical industry.

    For Americans with diabetes, cancer, asthma, infectious diseases, mental illnesses, and a myriad of other health issues, those flaws have been causing suffering and even death for decades. From growing shortages in essential medicines, to lagging innovation, dangerous mislabeling and misbranding, and the highest prices in the world, America’s pharmaceutical sector is clearly not meeting the needs of our society. The current crisis has brought these problems into even sharper focus.

    Now is the time to redesign our medicines system to effectively, equitably, and rapidly address and anticipate crises like the current pandemic. This can and must be done while also providing a safe, consistent, and affordable supply of essential medicines to all, including persons with health challenges beyond COVID-19.

    Medicines were long considered a public good, off-limits to corporate profiteering, price-gouging, and monopolizing. It is time for us to reclaim them as such. We must transform the U.S. pharmaceutical sector so that our nation can  successfully combat this crisis, prepare for the next one, and ensure that  millions of people have access to the essential medications they need to live healthy lives, and participate in society and the economy.

    To do so, we must take these four steps:

    1. Codify open science practices that accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and strengthen the evidence base on which our medicines system rests.

    “Open science”—broad, ready, equitable access to scientific knowledge, and to the data that generates that knowledge, across a drug’s entire lifecycle—is essential to focusing research and development activity on the most crucial health needs, accelerating R&D, expanding competition and preventing monopolization, and reducing costs. We must provide access to the “means, methods, and materials” of biomedical innovation, including various preclinical, clinical, and financial data that is currently kept mostly hidden by industry, government, and academia.

    This could be done in two phases. In phase one, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other public agencies—including the public sector vaccine and pharmaceutical agencies we describe below—would begin discretionary sharing of preclinical and clinical data they hold. Government-held results of experiments and clinical trials, and information on the costs of this research, can and should be shared regardless of if the results are generated by government, industry, or academia. Such data sharing would make it easier for researchers to replicate research findings, reduce redundancy and other inefficiency, and speed the development of new therapies.

    Phase one could be achieved immediately, through agency discretion, without changes to existing law. However, Congress could maximize public benefit by making this data sharing mandatory.

    Phase two would extend open science to manufacturing. Sharing data and know-how on manufacturing processes would accelerate development of new drugs, especially biologics and biosimilars. This would break monopolies and lower sky-high prices.

    To achieve this, Congress should amend federal statute (such as the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act) to require manufacturers and the FDA to share information that is currently protected as trade secrets once the appropriate exclusivity period has passed. Congress should also provide the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discretion to share manufacturing information—and clinical data, too—sooner, before the exclusivity period expires, to accelerate competition in the event of anticompetitive conduct or pressing public health needs. The Patent Act should also be reformed to raise the bar to patentability, require patent owners to disclose more useful information, and discourage dense patent “thickets” that overprotect drugs’ manufacturing processes.

    2. Create public sector capacity for full-cycle pharmaceutical innovation and production of essential medicines.

    The U.S. should establish a public full-cycle pharmaceutical research and development institute and one or more public sector pharmaceutical manufacturers. These institutions would work together based on a new bottom line: the public good. The American public already funds many breakthroughs in the discovery and development of new drugs—far more than even the largest drug companies. But we currently depend on those companies, and the profit motive, to get those breakthroughs to patients.

    Public sector institutions could work together to reimagine the innovation cycle from beginning to end. They could direct discovery efforts at the disease areas most important to public health, and lead the world on open science, embracing and expanding on the data sharing asked of industry. Additionally, as public sector actors, these institutions would benefit from the “patient capital”—investment not expected to turn a quick profit—needed to engage in the long-term, uncertain process of discovering and developing truly revolutionary science.

    Public pharmaceuticals would lower prices, return revenues to public balance sheets and reduce inefficiencies while building in surge capacity for crises. They would foster a more resilient supply chain and ensure broad, equitable access to new drugs through public-interest management of its inventions. These institutions would be a source of stable, public sector jobs (themselves an upstream investment in health).

    By breaking Big Pharma’s monopoly on our medicines supply, public sector institutions would also begin to erode its capture of our political system. The U.S. public sector has a long tradition of path-breaking innovation, from development of the internet to HIV prevention therapy to putting people on the moon. It is incumbent upon us to also wield the full power of that public sector innovation-engine to develop the medicines our society most needs, and assure equitable access to them.

    3. Use the full power of compulsory licensing to ensure access to essential medicines.

    The federal government should use its existing compulsory licensing power to either directly manufacture essential medicines or allow others to do so. This will ensure adequate supplies and equitable, affordable access. Under two different U.S. statutes, we already possess full legal rights to bypass the barriers of privately-held medicine patents.

    There is a long history of the U.S. government issuing compulsory licenses to respond to crises like the one we face today, ensuring affordable access to medicines and technologies in the medical, energy, and other sectors.

    In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several nations are already taking steps to issue compulsory licenses for medicines (and other medical technologies). Beyond the present pandemic, we must also recognize the everyday crises of lack of access to many essential medicines—whether driven by shortages or prohibitive costs—and use compulsory licensing any time access issues jeopardize public health.

    Extending the U.S. government’s compulsory licensing power beyond patents to trade secret manufacturing information and regulatory exclusivities (as described above) will ensure that these barriers do not jeopardize public health either. Compulsory licenses call for a reasonable royalty to be paid to the holder of the patent instead of the typical massive monopoly mark-up. Therefore, prescription drugs manufactured through compulsory licensing can be much cheaper, while innovators are nonetheless compensated for their work.

    4. Take the vaccine industry into public ownership to assure its products are available to all.

    Vaccines are not an effective market good; in fact, they are an essential public good. Only a robust, public program of vaccine development and production can meet our public health challenges. In a profit-driven pharmaceutical industry, vaccines for infectious diseases simply do not offer the kind of return on investment that owners believe they deserve.

    This has led most major pharmaceutical companies to pull out of vaccine development altogether, leaving us with a highly consolidated and non-competitive oligopoly of producers–none with the capacity to alone produce a coronavirus vaccine at scale. Yet, current U.S. policy is built on the presumption that these same disinterested corporate actors are the only ones capable of bringing vaccines to market, despite many historical examples to the contrary. De-privatizing the vaccine industry would be a major step towards establishing the full public sector capacity needed to assure essential medicines are accessible to all.

    Such de-privatizations in times of emergency are commonplace, and the U.S. has specific experience with public sector mobilization of vaccine development and production, including our highly successful vaccine program during World War II. A public laboratory in Canada recently led the development of the Ebola vaccine. And the U.S. public has already invested billions in vaccine development through federal agencies.

    By taking the vaccine industry into full public ownership, we can provide an internationalized response to this and future pandemics that properly recognizes vaccines as a global public good. Vaccines developed in the public sector could be licensed through a global pool—or developed and marketed without patents altogether—so that they are available to all, ensuring the prompt and equitable access necessary for coherent public health interventions. A federal vaccine development agency could break with industry’s tradition of secrecy and commit itself to data sharing, accelerating innovation around the world.

    Conclusion

    The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed shocking deficiencies in our country’s commitment to the health of all Americans. The choice to prioritize corporate profits over the research, development, and distribution of effective, affordable medicines has proven deadly, just as it has for Americans who have been facing dire access challenges for decades. We are confronting the challenge of our lifetimes without the tests, treatments and vaccines we need. Yet, more and more public money is being pumped into a system best placed to produce duplicative “me-too” drugs that generate excessive profits but have little to no impact on public health.

    The pandemic has taught us a brutal lesson: it is time to reclaim our medicines system for the public good. These four steps are the way to begin.

    Signers

    • Action Center on Race and the Economy
    • AIDS Foundation of Chicago
    • Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
    • American Family Voices
    • Black AIDS Institute
    • Center for Open Science
    • Center for Popular Democracy
    • Columbia University Students for a National Health Program
    • Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, U.S. Provinces
    • Consumer Action
    • Democratic Socialists of America Health Workers Collective
    • Faith in Healthcare
    • Health Global Access Project
    • I-MAK
    • Indivisible
    • Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
    • Just Care USA
    • Latino Commission on AIDS
    • LupusChat
    • Maine People’s Alliance
    • National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
    • NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
    • People’s Action
    • Physicians for a National Health Program
    • Progressive Doctors
    • Right Care Alliance
    • Rights & Democracy
    • Rights & Democracy NH & VT
    • Social Security Works
    • T1International USA
    • The Democracy Collaborative
    • The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow
    • Treatment Action Group
    • United Vision for Idaho
    • Universal Health Care Action Network
    • Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM)
    • Washington CAN
  • Coronavirus: Who will get a vaccine and when?

    Coronavirus: Who will get a vaccine and when?

    With a few COVID-19 vaccines making their way through the clinical trial phase and seeing successful outcomes, it is more than likely that a vaccine will be approved by the end of this year or early next year. It will take time though to manufacture enough vaccines for the US population. The question becomes who will get a vaccine and when.

    As of now, experts assume that people will need at least two vaccine injections to be protected from the virus. By early 2021, it looks as if there might be enough vaccines for 50 million people, 100 million doses. If they are available, we don’t yet know the distribution plan.

    It makes sense that older adults would be at or near the top of the list to receive the vaccine since older adults are most likely to die if they catch the novel coronavirus. Essential workers are most at risk, and they should be at the very top of the list. Racial equity issues also should be factored into the decision of who gets the vaccine early on.

    Helen Branswell reports for Stat News that, as of now, there are three different entities charged with coming up with a plan for rolling out the vaccine: The National Academy of Medicine, which was asked by federal authorities to come up with a plan; the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a special panel charged with vaccine policy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which in situations like these normally comes up with the plan; and, Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s fast-tracking program for the COVID-19 vaccine, which claims to have authority over how the vaccine is distributed.

    The hope is that these three entities can work collaboratively. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine that they will all agree on a plan. And, if they do not, it’s unclear which agency will be the ultimate decider. This disorganization is another indicator of how desperately the US is in need of strong leadership.

    Here’s more from Just Care:

  • Fear of Covid-19 should not keep you from getting needed care

    Fear of Covid-19 should not keep you from getting needed care

    For the last four months, in-person medical appointments have been cancelled or postponed. Older adults have missed routine checkups, preventive screenings. They have delayed elective surgeries and other non-urgent care, as well as some care that is critical they receive. Rachel Nania reports for AARP on how fear of COVID-19 keeps older adults from getting needed care.

    Over the last few months, many older adults have not received medical services and treatments that they needed. Depending upon your health status and where you live, it might be time to schedule them.

    To be sure, people with compromised health and people who live in areas where novel coronavirus cases are rising might still need to rely on telehealth for their care. This is particularly true if their conditions can be managed remotely.

    However, many people have delayed emergency care, and emergency care should not be delayed. Emergency room visits were down 42 percent in the first couple of months of the pandemic. Close to one in three Americans did not get care for fear of COVID-19 infection.

    AARP advises that anyone who is having difficulty breathing or experiencing chest or upper abdominal pain should get care right away. So should people who become dizzy or weak or confused. Anyone who takes a bad fall should also get treatment quickly.

    In addition, older adults need to make sure they get the vaccines they need, in particular, the flu vaccine, the pneumococcal vaccine and the shingles vaccine. These vaccines are important for lowering people’s risk of needing hospitalization. Often, your local pharmacy or walk-in clinic can provide you with these vaccines.

    AARP also says that you should talk to your doctor about getting preventive care services, such as colonoscopies and cervical cancer screenings, and treatment that will improve your quality of life, such as a hip or knee replacement. And, if you have breast or bowel changes or serious exhaustion, call your doctor as soon as possible.

    Finally, people with certain chronic conditions should not put off seeing the doctor for too long. People with high blood pressure and people on blood thinners should routinely have their blood drawn to determine their medication levels. People with congestive heart failure and people with chronic kidney disease should see their doctors to protect themselves against developing a more serious condition. Talk to your geriatrician or primary care doctor about scheduling these appointments.

    Here’s more from Just Care: