U.S. agency says women can get abortion pill via mail
WASHINGTON — Women seeking an abortion pill will not be required to visit a doctor’s office or clinic during the covid-19 pandemic, U.S. health officials said Tuesday in the latest reversal in an ongoing legal battle over the medication. The Food and Drug Administration announced the policy change a day...
Regeneron’s antibody drug can help prevent covid-19 from spreading among household membersVideo
PHILADELPHIA — Drugs that can keep high-risk covid-19 patients out of the hospital are going begging because the supposed breakthrough treatments require an hour-long intravenous infusion and offer a rather small chance of benefit. On Monday, Regeneron announced results that may help make its monoclonal antibody combination, now branded REGEN-COV,...
Why ‘bailed-out’ hospital giants like UPMC thrived in 2020 while others floundered
UPMC wasn’t the only multibillion-dollar U.S. health system that got hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic-spurred federal relief, and then went on to rake in more money in 2020 than it did pre-pandemic. It’s not merely thanks to hefty bailouts and slowly rebounding hospital coffers that UPMC and other...
Australia halts AstraZeneca vaccine for most people under 50
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia on Thursday become the latest country to restrict use of the AstraZeneca vaccine by recommending that it not be given to people under age 50. The announcement came after Australian drug regulators held a series of urgent meetings earlier in the day. The recommendation came after...
U.K. advises limiting AstraZeneca in under-30s amid clot worryVideo
LONDON — British authorities recommended Wednesday that the AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine not be given to adults under 30 where possible because of strengthening evidence that the shot may be linked to rare blood clots. The recommendation came as regulators in the United Kingdom and the European Union emphasized that the...
Covid testing blitz undermined screening, fight against STDs
WASHINGTON — After an unprecedented push to test and track covid-19, public health workers are grappling with a worrisome side effect: a collapse in screening for sexually transmitted diseases that have been on the rise for years. Testing for diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea plummeted in many parts of the...
Class-action lawsuit contending Highmark failed to pay overtime to nurses reviewing insurance coverage
A nurse who worked for Highmark Inc. reviewing insurance coverage authorization requests filed a federal lawsuit against the company on Tuesday, alleging that it failed to pay required overtime. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, seeks class-action status and includes claims for violations of the federal Fair...
Study: Moderna vaccine lasts at least 6 months
BOSTON — New research suggests the protection the Moderna vaccine gives against covid-19 lasts for at least six months. The report Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine echoes what Pfizer said last week about its vaccine, which works in a similar way. Both reports were based on follow-up...
FDA OKs first new ADHD drug in over a decade for children
U.S. regulators have approved the first new drug in over a decade for children with ADHD, which causes inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. The Food and Drug Administration late Friday OK’d Qelbree for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children ages 6 to 17. It comes as a capsule that’s taken...
CDC inquiry sought on HIV outbreak in West Virgina’s largest county
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday submitted a congressional inquiry with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding an HIV outbreak in West Virginia’s largest county. The West Virginia Democrat asked for the inquiry on behalf of the Kanawha County Commission two months after a CDC official warned that...
Have an idea to improve masks? Biden administration holds $500K contest
President Joe Biden’s administration is looking for ways to improve face masks — and will give out $500,000 in prizes to help do it. The Mask Innovation Challenge invites Americans to submit ideas to make masks more comfortable to wear and to eliminate “barriers to use,” such as discomfort, contact...
U.S. allows 2 more over-the-counter covid-19 home tests
WASHINGTON — U.S. health officials have authorized two more over-the-counter covid-19 tests that can be used at home to get rapid results. The move by the Food and Drug Administration is expected to vastly expand the availability of cheap home tests that many experts have advocated since the early days...
More than a dozen states to open vaccines to all adultsVideo
More than a dozen states will open vaccine eligibility to all adults this week in a major expansion of covid-19 shots for tens of millions of Americans amid a worrisome increase in virus cases and concerns about balancing supply and demand for the vaccines. Meanwhile, the director of the Centers...
Paris court convicts, fines pharma firm for deadly diet pill
A French pharmaceutical company on Monday was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of euros in damages and fines for its role in one of the nation’s biggest modern health scandals, with a Paris court finding the firm guilty of manslaughter and other charges for selling a diabetes drug blamed...
UPMC doctors recommend antibody treatment early for covid patients
UPMC officials on Friday came together to make a concerted push for monoclonal antibody treatment for covid-19, strongly encouraging covid-positive individuals who are most at risk for hospitalization and death to ask for the treatment. Dr. Erin McCreary, an infectious disease pharmacist, described monoclonal antibodies as “copies of antibodies that...
Some women have lymph node swelling under arm after covid vaccine
Lea Anne Ochs was dismayed when she received a call from UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital about a follow-up ultrasound from a mammogram. “My mammograms had always been normal,” said the 48-year-old from Economy Borough, Beaver County. “It was my routine mammogram. And there was no family history of breast cancer.” The...
AstraZeneca confirms strong vaccine protection after U.S. riftVideo
AstraZeneca insisted Wednesday that its covid-19 vaccine is strongly effective even after counting additional illnesses in its disputed U.S. study, the latest in an extraordinary public rift with American officials. In a late-night press release, AstraZeneca said it had recalculated data from that study and concluded the vaccine is 76%...
A first: U.S. Senate confirms transgender doctor, Rachel Levine, for key postVideo
Voting mostly along party lines, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed former Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be the nation’s assistant secretary of health. She is the first openly transgender federal official to win Senate confirmation. The final vote was 52-48. Levine had been serving as Pennsylvania’s top health...
Ticks present concern about Lyme disease as weather warms
As the weather warms and people once again take to the outdoors, state officials are reminding residents that in addition to health and safety protocols for covid-19, there is also one of the state’s most persistent pests to consider: the black-legged tick, the primary vector for Lyme disease in Pennsylvania....
Highmark boasts $490M operating gain in 2020 — better than pre-pandemic
When covid-19 struck Western Pennsylvania last March, Highmark Health CEO and President David Holmberg said he and fellow executives braced for the worst. They weren’t sure just how overwhelmed their providers might get, or how much money and other resources it would take to keep operations going as outbreaks proliferated....
AstraZeneca: U.S. data shows vaccine effective for all ages
LONDON — AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday. AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding...
A huge spike in Medicaid enrollment in Pa. shows how devastating the coronavirus has been
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — There are many ways to measure the pain being felt by people in Cumberland County. More families in the...
Murrysville native recruits fellow MIT students, others to battle social isolation among seniorsVideo
Bhav Jain, 19, of Murrysville knows how he felt during the early stages of covid, forced to return home from his freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn from home. But even now, back in Boston to finish up his sophomore year, Jain is still thinking the...
‘Poundemic’ pitfalls: Trade bad quarantine food habits for healthy choicesVideo
Have you heard the term “poundemic”? It describes the unhealthy eating habits and subsequent weight gain that have plagued many during the pandemic, said Dawn Davoli, a registered dietitian and nutritionist for Excela Health. “I’d say our eating habits tanked a little bit in the past year,” she said. “When...
CDC: Nearly everyone is returning for 2nd covid-19 shotVideo
More than 95% of the people who have received the first dose of the two-shot coronavirus vaccine regimen have returned on time for their second, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. The public health agency saw the statistics, which it compiled between Dec. 14 and Feb. 14,...
