CDC Updates Guidance on COVID+ Infections

I noted in an earlier post that the Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) was considering a significant change to their recommendations for patients who test positive for Covid-19 ("Chicken Soup for COVID?", 2/18/24). Things got busy at work, and I neglected to post a link to the final version of the recommendations, which CDC pushed out on March 1. You can find the press release here and the text of the recommendations here.

The new guidelines fairly drastically reduce the agency's previous quarantine recommendation:

When people get sick with a respiratory virus, the updated guidance recommends that they stay home and away from others. For people with COVID-19 and influenza, treatment is available and can lessen symptoms and lower the risk of severe illness. The recommendations suggest returning to normal activities when, for at least 24 hours, symptoms are improving overall, and if a fever was present, it has been gone without use of a fever-reducing medication.

Once people resume normal activities, they are encouraged to take additional prevention strategies for the next 5 days to curb disease spread, such as taking more steps for cleaner air, enhancing hygiene practices, wearing a well-fitting mask, keeping a distance from others, and/or getting tested for respiratory viruses. . . .

For all intents and purposes, the CDC recommends the same steps for dealing with COVID as for influenza. The absence of fever for 24 hours, not a negative COVID test, is the key to ending quarantine and returning to a mostly normal life. "Normal" in this case includes limiting close contact with others, wearing well-fitted masks, improving indoor air quality, and practicing good hygiene.

Biden's State of the Union Address: 13 Health Care Take-aways

Becker's Hospital Review takes a look at "13 healthcare takeaways" from President Biden's State of the Union address last evening. They include:

1. Expanding Medicare's drug price negotiation scope
2. Limiting drug costs
3. Expanding rebate requirement
4. Closing Medicaid coverage gap [for 10 states, including Texas, that haven't expanded eligibility]
5. Capping the cost of insulin
6. Abortion access
7. COVID-19
8. Affordable Care Act
9. Women's health
10. Taxes
11. Gun violence
12. PACT Act [Resources for Veterans]
13. ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health ) 

Chicken Soup for COVID-19?

Earlier this week, NBC reported that the CDC is considering a substantial change to its isolation guidelines for individuals who are COVID+. Under the proposal, individuals with COVID would be allowed to re-enter society 24 hours after they are fever-free without medications. In essence, according to the report, CDC's recommendation would be to treat COVID like the flu.

Soon after the NBC story broke, an anonymous official at DHHS emphasized there is no change yet, meaning their 5-day isolation/10-day masking guideline is still in effect, at least until it isn't, pointing out that "discussions are at an early stage and no definitive decisions have been made."

Outside the Washington Beltway, support for the change seems to be building:

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said he and his colleagues have privately encouraged the CDC to drop the five-day isolation period, in part because there’s little evidence it’s stopping the spread of Covid. 

The “rigorous recommendations that are currently in place do not reflect common practice,” Schaffner said. “It’s difficult to demonstrate that strict isolation has had a notable impact on transmission.” 

California and Oregon have already broken with the CDC, suggesting that people don't need to stay home if they've been fever-free for 24 hours without medication.

“With each day, the risk of communicability diminishes,” Schaffner said. “Public health recommendations have to be practical.” That is, people may stay home for a few days if they have a fever and feel achy and fatigued. After that, it’s back to business as usual.

Dr. David Margolius, the public health director for the city of Cleveland, said he was also in favor of easing isolation restrictions.

“For a couple years, people really associated public health with the elimination of Covid,” Margolius said. But “public health is about increasing life expectancy for our residents. It’s about improving quality of life. And that is more than just controlling one virus.”

Covid is still contagious, said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Medicine. “What the CDC and health departments are trying to say is that we need to have policies that people are going to actually follow,” Karan said.

As of this month, emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are down, according to the latest CDC data.

Donald Trump and the Perils of Practicing Medicine Without a License

Hydrochloroquine for COVID? Remember when that was a thing?

From The Messenger (Jan. 4):

In a study published this week in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, French researchers found that 17,000 people died across six countries because they depended on [the] drug. Researchers say this is because the drug was used in lieu of more effective treatments, and the potential cardiovascular issues it can cause as a side effect.

That number includes 12,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. Politico adds: "In fact, they say the figure may be far higher given the study only concerns six countries from March to July 2020, when the drug was prescribed much more widely."

You may recall that hydrochloroquine was then-President Trump's treatment of choice (along with household bleach). Here's the history reminder from The Messenger:

It was quickly shown to be ineffective. However, in a situation The Lancet describes as a “comedy of errors”, many political figures continued to endorse the drug as a legitimate COVID treatment. According to one report, Donald Trump, who was president at the time, was among the most prominent advocates of the medication as a treatment for COVID, mentioning it on Twitter and in press briefings.

“What do you have to lose? Take it,” Trump said during a White House briefing in 2020. “I really think they should take it. But it’s their choice. And it’s their doctor’s choice or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine. Try it, if you’d like.”

Physician Acquitted in $15M Healthcare Fraud Prosecution

A federal jury in Maryland convicted the physician on five counts of healthcare fraud in connection with his billing practices for level 4 CPT codes for evaluation and management services (E/M) for Covid patients. According to Becker's Hospital Review:

Ron Elfenbein, MD, 49, owned First Call Medical Center and Chesapeake ERgent Care, which operated multiple drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites. He instructed employees, in addition to billing for COVID-19 tests, to bill for high-level evaluation and management visits, according to an Aug. 4 Justice Department news release. Dr. Elfenbein ordered the high-level visits to be billed for all patients, including those who were asymptomatic, getting tested for their employment requirements or being tested so that they could travel, according to the release. Dr. Elfenbein was accused of submitting false claims for tens of thousands of high-level visits that were ineligible for reimbursement. 

As analyzed by Husch Blackwell:

[U]nlike some CPT codes, E/M CPT codes are imprecise. There is purpose in E/M CPT codes’ imprecision in that it allows physicians flexibility to exercise their best judgment given the multitude of factors that go into medical decision-making.

But that imprecision in E/M CPT codes makes for difficult federal prosecutions. As the court held in overturning Dr. Elfenbein’s convictions, CPT codes’ “imprecision does not necessarily integrate well with the clear notice and due process guarantees of our criminal law” and “where the relevant CPT codes and related definitions are ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations, problems clearly arise.” 

Does this mean DOJ can't win ambiguous-CPT code cases? Not at all (from Husch):

The court was careful to make clear that it is possible for the Justice Department to successfully prosecute defendants who take advantage of ambiguous CPT codes, but that such prosecutions must show objective falsity in a way the prosecutors failed to do in Dr. Elfenbein’s trial. The “Government sails in shallow waters when it prosecutes a case of this type; these cases require careful navigation,” wrote the court.

To make its point, the court pointed to several cases in which the Justice Department was able to navigate ambiguous waters, including one E/M CPT case in which the prosecution’s expert testified the medical judgment was “not even close to being properly classified” at the code’s level. And so, while prosecutions based on ambiguous CPT codes are clearly an uphill battle for the Justice Department, they are not insurmountably uphill. 

The district court's 90-page opinion is here. 

RFK, Jr., Public Health Law & Policy

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running for the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential nomination. He is a prominent member of one of this country's most prominent political families, at least since the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Buckleys, and . . . oh, we do love our dynasties, don't we?

In a past life, he was an environmental activist (although Dan Farber, whose work I admire, is a skeptic on that count, as well). But RFK, Jr. is also a prominent spreader of misinformation about Covid, vaccines, and Covid vaccines in particular. If his dangerous positions on these public health basics had been the official government policy, countless more people in this country would have died than the 1,137,057 who have died so far. Period. (Interestingly, there isn't a whisper about these issues on his official campaign website. Perhaps because media coverage has been dominated by questions about these issues to exclusion of much else on his issues list, and because just about the entire Kennedy family seems to be opposed to his positions. NYT, Aug. 6, 2023; Politico, April 19, 2023.)

FactCheck.org's SciCheck team has a three-part series on Kennedy's Covid and vaccine errors:

In our first article, Jessie addresses several of Kennedy's key talking points about vaccines in general. (See "FactChecking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.")

In a second article, Staff Writer Kate Yandell goes deep into some of his go-to arguments about vaccines and autism. (See "What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About Autism.")

[In] the third and final article, Staff Writer Catalina Jaramillo and Kate tackle Kennedy's numerous claims about the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which we’ve written about before and may be familiar to you already.

All three articles can be found on this page. 

Physician Discipline: Covid Denier's License Suspended, but Not For Lying

Sherri Tenpenny, D.O., testified before the Ohio legislature that the Covid vaccine "magnetizes" recipients and interfaces with 5G cellphone towers. Soon after, her medical license came up for renewal and the Ohio Medical Board renewed it, no muss, no fuss, despite the good doctor having been named as "one of the 12 most prolific spreaders of COVID-19 misinformation on social media, according to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate." (Becker's Hospital Review, Sept. 20, 2021).

At the time of the renewal, the Board said that renewal was an automatic process and did not foreclose a future investigation. After receiving approximately 350 complaints, the Board did start an investigation. Dr. Tenpenny, however, unwisely blew off the Board's discovery requests and a subpoena to testify, and for that she got her license suspended until she starts to cooperate with the Board's investigation. (Becker's Hospital Review,  Aug. 9, 2023).

This case offers two teaching points: (1) many licensing boards are slow to react to quackery, and (2) turning your back on a board’s investigation never pays off  

Meanwhile, Dr. Tenpenny's anti-vaccine and conspiracy-spewing firm rakes in an estimated $4.04 million in annual sales. There's gold in them thar lies!

Public Health Law Priorities to Pursue While Congress Recesses

The American Public Health Association (APHA) sent out its call to action during the current Congressional recess. In addition to providing advice on how to press your views on public-health issues while the Senators and Representatives are away, the APHA missive provides links to a wealth of policy papers, reports, and the like across a broad spectrum of public health. And its not only about Congress. As the APHA suggests, state and local officials -- traditional wielders of "police powers" -- also need to be educated about public health, about which so much misinformation and disinformation emerged during COVID. And there are op-ed opportunities. The list goes on . . . .

Congressional recess is here (July 31 – Sept. 11 for the House and July 31 – Sept. 4 for the Senate) which makes this month the perfect time to raise your public health voice and urge your members of Congress to take action. Join the Speak for Health campaign with APHA’s suggested advocacy activities:

•  Got a minute? Head over to APHA’s action alerts and send a quick message to your elected officials on a variety of topics including environmental health, reproductive rights, gun violence and public health funding.
• Schedule a meeting with your members of Congress, virtually or in person, to discuss public health priorities. You can call their local offices for details on scheduling a meeting.
• When speaking to elected officials, point to APHA’s 2023 advocacy priorities as key areas for action.
• Boost your advocacy efforts with issue fact sheets that summarize priority advocacy issues and state fact sheets that break down public health in each state.
• Write and submit an op-ed to your local paper. APHA offers op-ed writing tips and sample op-eds on gun violence, climate change, public health funding and reproductive health which you can request by emailing speakforhealth@apha.org.
• Engage elected officials on social media about their support for public health. You can include social media shareable images found on the Speak for Health page, and make sure you use the hashtag #SpeakForHealth!
• Attend a town hall and ask your elected official key questions about their commitment to supporting public health. You can contact their office to ask when the next town hall is scheduled.

Your voice helps shape how members of Congress view critical public health issues, and your community’s public health concerns deserve to be heard by our nation’s leaders. Join us and Speak for Health — for today and for future generations.

The APHA 2023 advocacy priorities cover a lot of territory and offer something for everybody:

• Increase and protect funding for vital public health agencies and programs and strengthen the nation’s public health infrastructure. 
• Uphold the Affordable Care Act and expand access to health coverage and services. 
• Address the health impacts of climate change. 
• Protect access to reproductive health care. 
• Pass a 2023 Farm Bill to protect nutrition security. 
• Protect nutrition standards for children. 
• Uphold and strengthen critical public health laws and regulations and reverse damaging rollbacks. 
• Address the nation’s gun violence epidemic.

For more information on APHA’s advocacy priorities, visit https://www.apha.org/advocacy or contact Don Hoppert at Donald.Hoppert@apha.org or Jordan Wolfe at Jordan.Wolfe@apha.org.   

COVID-19: GAO Recommendations Can Help Federal Agencies Better Prepare for Future Public Health Emergencies

There's a general consensus that COVID-19 exposed gaps in this country's state and federal public health infrastructure (in the broadest sense of that word). So when Congress passed the CARES Act, it included a provision for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report regularly on the public health and economic effects of the pandemic and the federal response. 

GAO's most recent report was issued yesterday (July 11; quick summary). This report includes the topics of (1) public health preparedness, (2) improper payments and fraud, (3) vulnerable populations, (4) distribution of federal COVID-19 funding, and (5) COVID-19 and the economy. It also includes updates for selected indicators related to public health, the economy, and federal COVID-19 funding and spending.

The report provides a wealth of information on how the federal government's $4.7 trillion pandemic-related expenditures have been spent. It also reviews the major areas in which our response was not up to the task. Finally, the report "includes several key data updates and five enclosures that summarize and highlight standalone reports issued from April 2022 (the date of our last comprehensive report) through April 2023 on the following topics: public health preparedness, improper payments and fraud, vulnerable populations, distribution of federal COVID-19 funding, and COVID-19 and the economy." 

Don't Deny COVID Care to the Unvaccinated

1. It's bad policy.

2. It's not feasible.

3. It's unethical.

These are the messages from Ed Yong's latest piece in The Atlantic: "It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People." To which I'd add:

4. Tort law will not support your decision. My first-year Torts students read a case in which the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed a trial court decision to allow the jury to compare the degree of fault of a hospital and two employees (whose provision respiratory support left the patient with permanent brain damage) with the degree of fault of the plaintiff (who had been driving with a blood alcohol level of .20% at the time of the accident). The American Law Institute's Third Restatement of Torts supports the rule that a patient's prior conduct (whether tortious or criminal) -- conduct that necessitate the medical treatment in issue -- does not diminish a health care provider's duty to treat or the duty to meet a professional standard of care. Restatement (Third) of Torts, Apportionment of Liability § 7, cmt. m (2000).

Yong concedes that this "debate" is theoretical: 

Health-care workers are not denying care to unvaccinated patients, even though, ironically, many told me they’ve been accused of doing so by not prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, which are ineffective against COVID but are often wrongly billed as lifesavers. Still, I ran this argument past several ethicists, clinicians, and public-health practitioners. Many of them sympathized with the exasperation and fear behind the sentiment. But all of them said that it was an awful idea—unethical, impractical, and founded on a shallow understanding of why some people remain unvaccinated.

Vaccines and Religious Exemptions

Prof. Wendy Parmet had an excellent guest column in the NY Times on 10/31 concerning religious exemptions from vaccination mandates during a pandemic. She points out that the Supreme Court has been pretty consistent since 1905 that medical exemptions -- based upon legitimate medical evaluations -- are legitimate (and may be required by the Constitution -- I think they are), but that until the past year, the Court was clear that religious exemptions are not required by the Constitution. A handful of cases from the Court's "shadow docket" suggest majority support for religious exemptions. As a public-health scholar, Parmet sees this trend as not only worrying but potentially deadly.

Friday's decision to allow Maine's vaccination mandate to remain in effect was not as hopeful a sign as one might expect. Parmet explained that three justices supported a religious exemption as a First Amendment requirement, which turns a century of public-health rulings on their head. Two other conservatives voted with the liberals on process grounds (another shadow docket decision), which suggests there might be five votes for a constitutionally required religious exemption from vaccination mandates. 

Unvaccinated patients added $5.7 billion to June-August healthcare expenditures

It's not surprising, but it is still staggering. As reported by Health Affairs: "A surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations among people who have not been vaccinated in August is adding billions of dollars in preventable costs to the nation’s health-care system. The analysis estimates that the preventable costs of treating unvaccinated patients in the hospitals now stand at an estimated $5.7 billion." The full Peterson-KFF report is here.

The latest surge: It's real and it was avoidable

Paul Krugman's N.Y. Times newsletter today (not posted yet, but it should be soon) has two altogether unsurprising but very revealing graphs that neatly summarize where we are with the latest surge in COVID-related deaths:

The delta variant is everywhere, but not every country is experiencing the surge that we are. Something other than infectivity is at work here. As Krugman points out, "the systematic refusal to get vaccinated, refusal to wear masks, etc., is very clearly tied to the unique way that common-sense public health measures have been caught up in the culture war. . . . According to a recent NBC poll, 91 percent of Biden voters have been vaccinated but only 50 percent of Trump voters. Or look at death tolls: Blue states look more like Canada or Germany than like Florida or Texas".

Can anyone seriously doubt that the non-policies of Govs. DeSantis and Abbott are unnecessarily killing people in their states?

DFW's COVID-19 Hospitalizations Have Tripled in the Past Month

This is today's dispatch from Steve Love, the CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council:

We have 1,126 COVID-19 patients in our hospitals in TSA-E which is an increase from 1046 yesterday and we are sorry to see this number spike over 1,100 COVID-19 hospitalized patients. This represents 8.28 percent of bed capacity and 23.91 percent of adult ICU patients which means we are approaching one in four of our adult ICU patients has COVID-19. Tarrant county has 401, Dallas 336, Collin 162, Denton 53, Hunt 28, Grayson 30 and Rockwall 35. As we have said before, the majority of the patients are not vaccinated. As a point of reference, we had 387 COVID-19 patients in the hospitals on June 25 so as you can tell, our hospitalizations have increased significantly in 30 days. Currently, we have 118 available adult staffed ICU beds . We have 135 adults on ventilators.

As nearly as anyone can tell, with the exception of a relative handful of "breakthrough" infections among the fully vaccinated (to be expected, because no vaccine is 100% effective), this increase is almost entirely among the unvaccinated population. 

I am not inclined to be judgmental when it comes to choices people make for themselves, but refusing vaccination puts family and loved ones and the rest of the community at increased risk, and as the above numbers indicate, stress the critical care capacity to the detriment of other patients who also need treatment. Without a truly compelling reason (e.g., a validated medical reason) to skip vaccinations, failing to be vaccinated at this point is simply incomprehensible. And compelling reasons do not include cost (it's free), inconvenience (shots are available everywhere), or doubts about efficacy and safety (both of which have been amply demonstrated by the millions of individuals who have been vaccinated after the FDA granted emergency approval). 

Atul Gawande Nominated for Global Health Role at USAID

Good news for fans of Atul Gawande (books: Amazon author's page) who will be pleased to know Pres. Biden has nominated the author/surgeon/health policy wonk to be  assistant administrator of the United States Agency for International Development's Bureau for Global Health. One of the hottest pandemic-related issues confronting the developed world is how to meet the need for vaccines and vaccination resources (human and otherwise) in the 90% of the world that is less than 10% immunized. It's an enormous challenge and one that falls squarely within Dr. Gawande's portfolio (assuming Senate confirmation).

Grand Jury Declines to Indict Houston Doctor Accused of Stealing COVID Vaccine

As reported by The NY Times, The Associated Press, KHOU-TV, the Houston Chronicle, and Forbes, Dr. Hasan Gokal will not be indicted by the Harris County grand jury on charges that he stole vials of COVID-19 vaccine for family and friends. His defense consisted of the following:

1. The doses were about to be destroyed due to nonuse and aging.
2. It was his duty as a physician -- and one employed by the Harris County health department -- to maximize health and protect life.
3. Allowing the doses to be destroyed would have been a violation of his professional duties and sacred oath.

In short: "In an interview with The Associated Press, Gokal, 48, said when he was confronted with the possibility that a life saving vaccine could be lost, he made the decision to find eligible people late at night who could be given the expiring doses."

Although Harris County Public Health fired Gokal over the incident, the defense worked with the Texas Medical Board, which dismissed charges against him, as well as with a Harris County Court-at-Law Judge, who dismissed the theft charges against him. Prosecutors then turned to the grand jury, which rejected the case on June 30.

I'm searching for the right analogy to capture what was wrong with the prosecutor's case. Is this an "inverse Jean Valjean" situation, where the loaf of bread (vials of vaccine) would have been stolen not to feed Gokal's family (though his wife did get one of the doses) but the family of others? 

It's difficult to criticize Gokal's action if [1] the vaccine was going to be destroyed unless he acted, [2] noöne would be harmed if he did act (so this is not a variation on The Trolley Problem), [3] 9 otherwise at-risk individuals acquired some protection from infection at a time (late December 2020) when COVID-19 was still running rampant, and [4] Gokal himself wasn't responsible for creating the dilemma in the first place. 

COVID-19 at the Intersection of Criminal Justice Reform and Public Health

Interesting new piece is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): "Carceral-community epidemiology, structural racism, and COVID-19 disparities" by Reinhart and Chen. They report on a Cook County study and offer the following summary and recommendation:

As jails and prisons remain leading sites of COVID-19 outbreaks, mass incarceration poses ongoing health risks for communities. We investigate whether short-term jailing of individuals prior to release may drive COVID-19 spread. We find that cycling individuals through Cook County Jail in March 2020 alone can account for 13% of all COVID-19 cases and 21% of racial COVID-19 disparities in Chicago as of early August. We conclude that detention for alleged offenses that can be safely managed without incarceration is likely harming public safety and driving racial health disparities. These findings reinforce consensus among public health experts that large-scale decarceration should be implemented to protect incarcerated people, mitigate disease spread and racial disparities, and improve biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

The full article is well worth a close read. 

AstraZeneca in Major Dispute with U.S. Regulators

Anthony Fauci's Institute -- the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) -- issued a mind-blowing statement today:

Late Monday, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) notified NIAID, BARDA, and AstraZeneca that it was concerned by information released by AstraZeneca on initial data from its COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial. The DSMB expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data. We urge the company to work with the DSMB to review the efficacy data and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible.

It is almost (but not quite) inconceivable that AstraZeneca made an innocent error. The DSMB is accusing the firm of essentially "cherry-picking"  the data “most favorable for the study as opposed to the most recent and most complete.” (NY Times, 3/23) The DSMB's letter to the NIH and AstraZeneca stated that the efficacy rate of the firm's COVID-19 vaccine might be between 69% and 74%, rather than the 79% rate touted by AstraZeneca itself. Did AstraZeneca really think they could slip one past the regulators? And at what cost to its reputation? Not to mention at what cost to the worldwide public-health crisis, where mistrust of science and vaccine-skepticism don't need any more encouragement and support. 

From the Times article: “'Decisions like this are what erode public trust in the scientific process,' the board wrote." 

CDC's Guidance for "Fully Vaccinated People"

The guidance was issued earlier today, and you can read the whole document here. Meanwhile, here are the highlights:

Key Points

This is the first set of public health recommendations for fully vaccinated people. This guidance will be updated and expanded based on the level of community spread of SARS-CoV-2, the proportion of the population that is fully vaccinated, and the rapidly evolving science on COVID-19 vaccines.

For the purposes of this guidance, people are considered fully vaccinated for COVID-19 ≥2 weeks after they have received the second dose in a 2-dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), or ≥2 weeks after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson [J&J]/Janssen ).†

The following recommendations apply to non-healthcare settings.

Fully vaccinated people can:

Visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing

Visit with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing

Refrain from quarantine and testing following a known exposure if asymptomatic

For now, fully vaccinated people should continue to:

Take precautions in public like wearing a well-fitted mask and physical distancing

Wear masks, practice physical distancing, and adhere to other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease or who have an unvaccinated household member who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease

Wear masks, maintain physical distance, and practice other prevention measures when visiting with unvaccinated people from multiple households

Avoid medium- and large-sized in-person gatherings

Get tested if experiencing COVID-19 symptoms

Follow guidance issued by individual employers

Follow CDC and health department travel requirements and recommendations

Free Webinar: Pres. Biden's First 100 Days of Health Policy

This looks like a good webinar:

Boston University's Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights faculty discuss the first 100 days of President Biden’s term:

• Executive Orders,
• proposed bills, and
• other steps to tackle COVID, climate, and economic crises affecting health.

What has happened? What comes next? 

Thursday, March 11, 2021
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. EST

SPEAKERS
George Annas
Nicole Huberfeld
Wendy Mariner
Michael Ulrich

JOIN ZOOM MEETING
https://bostonu.zoom.us/j/93372687004?pwd=NXpoNm5wZW1YOEljeENyeWY2V3dVUT09

Meeting ID: 933 7268 7004
Passcode: 331167