Good morning and welcome to this week’s New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you updated on what’s happening this week in health care news and offer a look back at important news from the past week.
It’s that time of year again: The days are getting cooler, the kids are back in school, the apples are ripe for picking Upstate — and it’s time to start thinking about the upcoming cold and flu (and Covid) season.
With Covid-19 rates expected to rebound this fall — as they’ve done every year during the pandemic — state health officials are urging New Yorkers to get a booster shot (and flu shot) in the coming weeks. And with a new version of the vaccine targeting the Omicron subvariants that have caused a recent spike in cases, there is hope that the viral spread will slow.
The CDC recommends for everyone 12 and older to receive a Covid-19 booster vaccine formulated to target the subvariants that dominate infections in the US, POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner reported. The decision came shortly after the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel overwhelmingly recommended the updated Moderna vaccine for all adults and the updated Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 12 and older, setting the stage for a fall vaccination campaign.
State health officials said Friday that New Yorkers should soon be able to get the new booster shot. Shipments of small quantities of the updated booster vaccine are expected to begin this week based on pre-orders and supply. This, the Department of Health noted, “will be expanded rapidly once all authorization processes are in place and regular ordering begins.”
“We have a very powerful network of pharmacies and private clinics and doctors, and there will be a number of places for people to go to get vaccinated,” state health commissioner Mary Bassett said during recent remarks at the Great New York State Fair.
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POSTROE VOTER GROWTH ELUSIVE IN NY – POLITICO’s Bill Mahoney: Voter registration among young women has increased across the country after the Supreme Court overturned the ruling Roe v. Wade — signaling a complete denial of the decision. But not so in blue-collar New York.
In the first six months of 2022, a total of 50.8 percent of new registered voters in the state were women, according to a review of the registration database maintained by the State Board of Elections. July exceeded this figure by 51.6 percent. Both are in the same ballpark as in 2018, when 52.3 percent of newly registered voters in New York were women. The numbers pale in comparison to enrollment trends in other states.
… But, by almost any measure, the decision of the Supreme Court it did not immediately affect the New York voter rolls. Between Jan. 1 and May 3 — the day POLITICO first reported a draft of the impending decision — the percentage of newly registered New York voters who were women younger than 40 was 34.1 percent. It was 34.7 percent as of May 4 to the June 24 decision, and the figure rose to 35.9 percent in the following five weeks. Nor has there been a dramatic increase in Democratic registration nationwide. From January to June, 2.09 times more new voters joined the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. In July, 2.13 times as many registered as Democrats — likely due to the larger number of Democratic primaries on the ballot in August.
A MONKEY LEADER BITOR — POLITICO’s Krist Mahr: Since monkeypox began its unprecedented spread across the country in May, more than 352,600 people in the US have put their trust in a vaccine that has never undergone trials to assess how well it fights the virus in humans. The vaccine was designed to prevent smallpox, a related virus, and studies by its Danish manufacturer have shown it also works against monkeypox in animals.
Much less is known about how it works in humans. But the Biden administration is betting not only that it will work, but that it can stop another disfiguring, contagious disease from becoming endemic in the US, as it has been for decades in parts of Africa. The risks of the strategy are real: If the vaccine comes up short, Americans will have another disease to live with, and health officials will almost certainly further undermine confidence in public health.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS – POLITICO’s Shannon Young: New York has a message for businesses in states that have restricted access to abortion following the US Supreme Court’s ruling. Roe v. Wade change: Move here. Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday that her administration is touting its reproductive health policies and abortion access as part of its strategy to recruit companies based outside of New York to move to the state.
IN OTHER NEWS:
– National Academy of Medicine has selected Gunisha Kaur, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, as an Emerging Scholar in Health and Medicine.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: This review is for you! Submit news tips, health tips, ideas, critiques and corrections [email protected].
AND WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: Since the Supreme Court was overthrown Roe v. Wade in June, reports are emerging of patients — even those not seeking abortions — having trouble filling some prescriptions and of patients being denied treatment for pregnancy-related complications. Have abortion laws affected your access to health care? We want to hear from you.
NOW WE KNOW – American life expectancy has fallen to 76, the lowest level since the mid-1990s.
TODAY’S TIP – The Washington Post breaks down “what you need to know” about the newest Covid-19 booster shots to emerge this fall. (As does STAT.)
BE SURE TO FOLLOW Shannon@ShannonYoung413 on Twitter. And for all New Jersey health news, check out Daniel Hahn, @danieljhan_.
STUDY THIS – Via CNN: “Taking oral or inhaled glucocorticoids, a type of steroid used to curb inflammation in asthma and other autoimmune disorders, may be linked to harmful changes in the brain’s white matter, a new study finds” .
The Wall Street Journal reports that “specialists in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder plan to create the first US guidelines for diagnosing and treating the condition in adults.”
STAToffers a look at where things stand ahead of “a third Covid autumn”.
New York Times reports how the pandemic shortened life expectancy in indigenous communities.
Demographic data from New York and state health officials suggest that thousands of women received the monkeypox vaccine despite their low risk of viral exposure, the Times Union reports.
The children returned in New York classrooms without Covid-19 regulations, Gannett reports.
Gothamist looks at how child welfare agency in New York City is citing marijuana in family separations, despite legalization of the drug and changes in state policy.
The Atlantic reviews the reported benefits of singing to babies (or even pets).
“Public Housing Authority of New Yorkdiscovered traces of arsenic in the tap water at one of its largest developments in Manhattan,” reports THE CITY.
POLITICO’s Carlo Martuscelli and Sarah-Taissir Bencharif report that if you want to do the right thing, you better do it right. That’s the lesson the European Commission is being forced to learn after a landmark proposal to level the playing field for access to medicines across the EU was sent back to the redaction table over concerns the cost to the drug industry could be excessive. , according to people. familiar with the matter.
A coalition of abortion rights groups in Michigan filed an emergency appeal with the state Supreme Court on Thursday asking it to overturn the State Board of Canvassers’ decision and order their abortion rights amendment to be placed on the November ballot, Alice Miranda reports POLITICO’s Ollstein.
POLITICO’s Erin Banco and Adam Cancryn report that top health officials in the Biden administration are weighing whether to save vaccine doses that could be used to fight monkeypox for a possible future smallpox outbreak, according to two people with knowledge of the matter and an official senior administration.
Medical practices bought with private capital often charged more and saw more patients more often than practices that weren’t funded by private equity, according to a new study published Friday, POLITICO’s Daniel Payne reports.
HAS A SUMMARY POSSIBLE? Catch up on the New York Health Care Bulletin.
