A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tami Chappell | Reuters
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Good afternoon! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced two major recent Covid recommendations last week.
The primary – and rather more controversial – change applies to just about all of us. Individuals who test positive for Covid-19 now not must keep away from others for at the very least five days, in line with recent guidelines the CDC issued Friday.
The second, less surprising shift targets a narrower population: seniors. The CDC on Thursday really helpful that individuals ages 65 and older get an extra updated shot against the virus this spring.
The separate announcements show the tricky balancing act that the CDC faces because the pandemic enters its fifth yr.
On one hand, the agency is attempting to calm down and simplify its prior health guidelines to reflect the progress the U.S. has made in reducing hospitalizations and deaths from Covid over the past two years.
Doing so also goals to make the CDC’s guidance easier for Americans to grasp and follow, especially at a time when a lot of them are not any longer willing or in a position to spend every week out of labor or school.
Then again, the CDC remains to be attempting to stress the importance of using vaccines and coverings to combat the virus. Those protective tools are critical for people at higher risk of severe complications from Covid, including older adults and immunocompromised patients.
Now, let’s dig into the main points of the 2 recent recommendations.
The CDC’s recent isolation guidelines say individuals with Covid may resume every day activities if:
- They have been fever-free without medication for at the very least 24 hours.
- Their symptoms are improving overall for at the very least 24 hours.
That matches the agency’s public health advice for the flu and other respiratory illnesses. Notably, the advice doesn’t apply to health-care settings or nursing homes.
The CDC recommends that people who find themselves recovering from Covid or other respiratory viruses take additional precautions for five days. They include wearing well-fitting masks, washing their hands, limiting close contact with others, improving ventilation of their spaces and testing as needed.
The agency noted that U.S. states and countries which have already shortened their Covid isolation times haven’t seen increased hospitalizations or deaths related to Covid. That features California and Oregon.
Previously, the CDC really helpful that individuals with Covid stay home for at the very least five days to cut back the probabilities of spreading the virus to others. The agency’s initial isolation period was 10 days.
Some health experts had urged the agency to shorten that period even before the official announcement last week.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told NBC News last month that he and his colleagues have privately encouraged the CDC to drop the five-day isolation period. He said that is partly because there’s little evidence it’s stopping the spread of the virus.
Other experts were critical of the CDC’s recent guidance.
The agency’s recent guidance “promotes people shedding virus to contaminate others,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in a post on X. He added that, based on evidence from rapid antigen tests, most individuals will still be infectious in the event that they exit isolation earlier.
Sylvester Fisher gets a influenza vaccine from pharmacist Patricia Pernal during an event hosted by the Chicago Department of Public Health on the Southwest Senior Center on September 09, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. The vaccines were being offered together with pneumonia vaccines and the recently authorized COVID-19 booster vaccine, which protects against the unique SARS-CoV-2 virus and the newer omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5 in the course of the event. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Scott Olson | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The CDC’s other advice gave the impression to be less controversial. In any case, the agency in April backed a second dose of last yr’s Covid shot for seniors and immunocompromised people.
On Thursday, the CDC said healthy older adults should get an extra dose of the most recent round of Covid vaccines at the very least 4 months after their most up-to-date shot. People who find themselves immunocompromised are already eligible for one more dose of the updated vaccine.
Those updated vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are designed to focus on the omicron subvariant XBB.1.5. However the shots are also effective against the JN.1 subvariant, which currently accounts for greater than 90% of recent Covid infections within the U.S.
Now, the CDC is gearing up for one more slate of recent shots this fall.
Researchers are working on choosing a strain for the upcoming version, and can likely wait until May to select one to design vaccines around, CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday.
And he or she expects that to be the established order moving forward: “Folks should anticipate that after they get their flu shot, they’ll get an updated Covid shot as well,” she said.
Latest in health-care technology
A slight uptick in funding for ladies’s health
Pleased Women’s History Month!
It’s no secret that male founders receive vastly more enterprise capital funding than their female counterparts. The 30-year average for female founders’ total share of investments sits at just 2.4%, in line with a 2019 report from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Nevertheless, a recent report from Deloitte found that investments in women’s health could possibly be an emerging brilliant spot – though there remains to be plenty of room for improvement.
Investments across technology, pharma, biotech and medtech related to women’s health grew 5% between 2022 and 2023, the report said. Jennifer Radin, who leads Deloitte’s U.S. health-care advisory practice, said the uptick in investment is “really exciting” because women have been historically underrepresented in each the design and delivery of health care.
Besides, women’s health still makes up just 2% of enterprise funding for the general health-care industry, in line with the report. There’s still “plenty of room to grow,” Radin said.
She said women make up 50% of the U.S. population, 60% of the paid workforce and greater than 65% of the unpaid workforce, which incorporates child and family caretaking and household management. Because of this, the perception of ladies’s health as a distinct segment market is changing.
“Actually ensuring that girls have access to prime quality, inexpensive women-centered care creates a more stable economy, and a more stable society,” Radin told CNBC in an interview. “And so the business case for ladies’s health is definitely really clear and could be quantified.”
You may read the total report here.
A recent frontier for enterprise capital
In January, the enterprise firm General Catalyst announced it signed a letter of intent to amass Summa Health, a nonprofit integrated health system in northeast Ohio that supports greater than 1,000 inpatient beds.
It’s an unprecedented move in enterprise capital, and one which has elicited a mixed response from health-care professionals, investors and Ohio residents.
Dr. Marc Harrison, who’s now CEO of HATCo, speaking on the Healthy Returns conference in Recent York City on May 21, 2019.
Astrid Stawiarz | CNBC
General Catalyst set the stage for the deal in late 2022 when it brought in Dr. Marc Harrison, who spent the majority of the past twenty years within the upper ranks of medical systems. A yr later, the firm introduced a recent company called the Health Assurance Transformation Corporation, or HATCo, for Harrison to steer.
Harrison said HATCo’s goal is not to overhaul Summa by cutting costs. As a substitute, the corporate will work over a “decades-long time horizon” to determine recent revenue streams and models of care, particularly through the introduction of recent platforms and tech solutions.
CNBC explored the acquisition and what it would mean for Summa, in addition to why Harrison is up for the challenge. I’ll have rather more to return on this because it evolves!
Be happy to send any suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com and Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com