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Despite bipartisan concern about a proposal to require domestic air travelers to take a COVID-19 test before being permitted to board a flight, two Biden administration officials say the administration is still considering the idea. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, in separate appearances Sunday and Monday, both refused to rule out the idea of requiring all domestic air passengers to test negative for COVID-19 tests before flying. Currently, the CDC recommends passengers get tested before and after air travel and self-quarantine for seven days.  (Wehrman, 2/8)

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that testing people for the coronavirus before U.S. domestic flights could help reduce transmission, as she urged state and local leaders to maintain steps to limit Covid-19’s spread. Requiring air travelers to receive a negative coronavirus test before boarding could be “another mitigation measure,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Monday during a press briefing. She didn’t say whether the CDC would move forward with the policy, which the Biden administration is actively considering. (LaVito and Wingrove, 2/8)

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., on Monday introduced legislation to bar the Biden administration from introducing a mandate that passengers on domestic flights have a negative COVID-19 test before flying -- warning it would devastate the airline industry. (Shaw, 2/8)

Members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team announced on Friday that the Biden administration is finalizing contracts with six companies to quickly increase domestic testing capability for at-home SARS-CoV-2 tests. The deal would result in 61 million point-of-care or at-home tests available by the end of the summer, which Andy Slavitt, the senior adviser for the COVID-19 response team, said would "change things pretty significantly" for the country. The announcement follows the news earlier this week that the US Department of Defense awarded $231.8 million to Ellume USA to produce the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test. (2/8)

Vending machines give us candy bars, soda, headphones and even cupcakes. But the latest dispenser at the airport in Oakland, Calif., is distributing something more critical: coronavirus tests. The two machines, at each of Oakland’s terminals, work like pretty much any modern vending machine — make a selection on the screen and reach down to pick up your choice. In this case, though, the tests carry a significantly higher price tag (about $149) than a bottled water. But the cost of the test can be submitted to insurance later for reimbursement. (Lerman, 2/5)

Britain is looking at greater testing of all people who have arrived from abroad while they are self-isolating to defend against new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, a minister said on Tuesday. Airlines have been brought to their knees by the pandemic, with travel restrictions forcing once fast-growing brands like Norwegian to fight for survival while established names like British Airways have raised cash and laid off thousands of staff. (2/9)

The U.S. reported fewer than 100,000 new coronavirus cases for the second day in a row, as data showed that in several states, more than 10% of residents have received an initial dose of Covid-19 vaccines. Newly reported coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 86,000 for Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and published early Tuesday. The data may update later. The figure was slightly lower than the previous day’s revised total of 89,581 cases, according to Johns Hopkins. Nearly 27.1 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, out of almost 106.5 million world-wide. (Hall, 2/9)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Monday urged states against lifting coronavirus restrictions, citing the ongoing virus threat and more contagious variants on the rise despite lower case counts overall. Walensky was asked at a White House press briefing about Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) ending the state's mask mandate, as well as social distancing requirements for bars and restaurants, last week. (Sullivan, 2/8)

Evidence is mounting that having COVID-19 may not protect against getting infected again with some of the new variants. People also can get second infections with earlier versions of the coronavirus if they mounted a weak defense the first time, new research suggests. How long immunity lasts from natural infection is one of the big questions in the pandemic. Scientists still think reinfections are fairly rare and usually less serious than initial ones, but recent developments around the world have raised concerns. (Marchione, 2/8)

The arrival of several vaccines against the coronavirus is cause for celebration in the face of a pandemic that has killed millions across the globe, but health officials and experts are warning that wholly eradicating the virus is not likely an achievable goal. Instead, the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, are likely here to stay, a new and perpetual threat to human health that hums in the background of our everyday lives. (Wilson, 2/8)

In the face of spreading variants of the coronavirus that not only appear more contagious but in some cases more resistant to the newly developed vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said Monday that we have to adapt and respond. WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the new evidence that the AstraZeneca vaccine is only minimally effective in preventing infection with covid-19 shows the importance of keeping up with social distancing and other preventative measures. Manufacturers also need to constantly update their vaccines. (Schemm and Cunningham, 2/9)

The B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant, identified in 33 states thus far, will dominate other strains in the coming weeks, triggering major COVID-19 surges such as those seen in Portugal and the United Kingdom—unless the United States immediately scales up surveillance and mitigation efforts, according to a study published yesterday on the preprint server medRxiv. A team led by scientists from the Scripps Research Institute sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes from 10 states using US COVID-19 testing facilities to track the emergence and spread of B117, the more transmissible and lethal variant that was first discovered in the United Kingdom in September and likely introduced to the United States during holiday travel. (Van Beusekom, 2/8)

The likely faster-spreading variant of COVID-19 first detected in South Africa has arrived in the Houston area, according to Houston Methodist Hospital. The hospital system said it found the region’s first case of the troubling strain on Saturday while sequencing the genomes of positive test results. It also found two cases of the variant first discovered in the United Kingdom. The first U.K. variant case in the Houston area was confirmed in early January. (McGuinness, 2/8)

A Missouri teen who beat cancer three times has died from COVID-19 complications, her family said. Aspen Deke, 17, of Kansas City, succumbed to the virus Saturday following a months-long battle that began with her diagnosis in November, news station Fox4 reported. The high school junior had survived a rare form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer that impacts white blood cells. (Salo, 2/1)

AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine is worth using in areas hit by mutated strains of the virus, World Health Organization officials and partners said, countering concerns about reduced effectiveness that arose in a recent test. There’s evidence the vaccine AstraZeneca developed with the University of Oxford could provide meaningful protection against severe disease caused by the highly infectious variant that emerged in South Africa, called B.1.351, according to Kate O’Brien, who heads the WHO’s vaccination division. The global health agency is preparing to decide on an emergency-use listing for Astra-Oxford shots made in India and South Korea. (Gretler and Cohen, 2/8)

World Health Organization officials expressed confidence that AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine can prevent severe cases of the disease, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, despite questions about the protection it offers against a fast-spreading strain of the virus first detected in South Africa. The remarks followed a release of information over the weekend about a small clinical trial of the vaccine in South Africa, which prompted the government there to halt a planned rollout of the shot. (Steinhauser and Strasburg, 2/8)

South Africa is considering giving a COVID-19 vaccine that is still in the testing phase to health workers, after suspending the rollout of another shot that preliminary data indicated may be only minimally effective against the mutated form of the virus dominating the country. The country was scrambling Monday to come up with a new vaccination strategy after it halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which is cheaper and easier to handle than some others and which many had hoped would be crucial to combatting the pandemic in developing countries. Among the possibilities being considered: mixing the AstraZeneca vaccine with another one or giving Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, which has not yet been authorized for use anywhere, to 100,000 health care workers while monitoring its efficacy against the variant. (Medrum, 2/8)

When a plane loaded with 1 million doses of vaccine produced by AstraZeneca landed in South Africa on Feb. 1, a hopeful country watched with rapt attention. Exactly a week later came the blow: A study, however limited and not yet peer-reviewed, said the vaccine provided only “minimal protection” against contracting mild to moderate infections of a new coronavirus variant that is widespread in South Africa, where it was first detected. The variant has since been found in at least 30 countries. The news was a blow not only to South Africans but to billions of people whose governments are relying on the vaccine developed at Oxford University and made by AstraZeneca. (Bearak, Booth and Wroughton, 2/8)

A study today in Nature Medicine showed Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, the first vaccine approved in the United States for use against COVID-19, neutralized three variants of the virus, including the B117 strain first identified in the United Kingdom, and two new variants first confirmed in South Africa. The mutations tested included the N501Y from the United Kingdom and South Africa, the 69/70-deletion + N501Y + D614G from United Kingdom; and E484K + N501Y + D614G from South Africa. (2/8)

It is not yet clear whether the world needs a new set of vaccines to fight different variants of the novel coronavirus but scientists are working on new ones so there is no reason for alarm, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said on Tuesday. ... “There are definitely new questions about variants that we’re going to be addressing. And one of those is: do we need new vaccines?,” Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, told BBC radio. “I think the jury is out on that at the moment, but all developers are preparing new vaccines so if we do need them, we’ll have them available to be able to protect people.” (Faulconbridge and Holton, 2/9)

More than a month into the rollout, the Pennsylvania Health Department hasn’t done any targeted outreach on the vaccine to communities that don’t speak English, many of whom have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. The state’s map of vaccine providers — which includes information on how and where to book coveted appointments — appears only in English. And a translated fact sheet on the vaccine for Spanish speakers hasn’t been updated since late December, before adults 65 and over and younger people with select health conditions became eligible. (Olumhense, 2/9)

People looking to get their COVID-19 vaccinations at CVS Health will have to wait another day as the pharmaceutical giant pushes its vaccine rollout back to Feb. 12. Pharmacies such as CVS will receive vaccine allocations from a federal partnership, and shipping delays in the chain have forced CVS to open its appointment sign-ups and start vaccination later than originally announced, said Monica Prinzing, a CVS Health spokesperson. The company will provide 38,000 vaccines across 70 Texas locations, including an undisclosed number in Houston. CVS will not provide a full list of participating locations because “active stores will change regularly based on vaccine supply.” (Wu, 2/8)

When Allentown started vaccinating health workers last month, people who weren’t tech-savvy had trouble signing up for appointments. Sites were sometimes overbooked. Clinic employees would be ready to vaccinate 500 people, health director Vicky Kistler said, and 600 would show up with appointments. The city was using a registration software called PrepMod, which it could access for free under a state contract and, most important, synced with the commonwealth’s immunization record system. It sounded like the easiest option for scheduling thousands of vaccinations and saved workers hours of tedious work manually inputting demographic data that must be reported within 24 hours of vaccination. (McCarthy and McDaniel, 2/8)

Demand for the COVID-19 vaccine is surging in Utah, but on Monday, Utah County couldn’t fill hundreds of appointment slots it had available on its website. Utah County Health Department spokeswoman Aislynn Tolman-Hill said it’s the first time the county has seen less demand for the vaccine. Meanwhile, the Salt Lake County Health Department’s website says its vaccination appointments are full through Feb. 27. (Wahlberg, 2/9)

KHN: Vaccine Hesitancy Vs. Vaccine Refusal: Nursing Home Staffers Say There’s A Difference 

It had been months since Tremellia Hobbs had an excuse to bring out the pompoms. Before the pandemic, they were a crowd favorite at movie nights and bingo tournaments that Hobbs organized as activities director at the Brian Center Health & Retirement/Cabarrus nursing home. On Jan. 14, she finally had a reason. After nearly a year of living with pandemic restrictions and a summer outbreak that killed 10 residents and infected 30 staff members, the nursing home was hosting its first covid-19 vaccine clinic. (Pattani, 2/9)

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris got a virtual tour Monday of a federally funded, mass vaccination site in Arizona, but they did not address the governor’s request for more doses of the vaccine. Dr. Cara Christ, state Department of Health Services director, guided Biden and Harris through the outdoor command center at State Farm Stadium in Glendale that operates around the clock. (2/8)

As of now, even if you have been fully vaccinated for Covid-19, the advice from health officials is to keep wearing your mask, keep social distancing and keep away from get-togethers. But Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday there might be new guidance coming soon. (Howard, Neville and Maxouris, 2/9)

KHN: Scalise’s Claim That Unauthorized Immigrants Are Getting Priority For Vaccination Misses The Point

During a Feb. 2 interview on Fox News, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) claimed President Joe Biden was allowing unauthorized immigrants to move ahead of American citizens to get their covid-19 vaccines. “Now [Biden’s] saying that people who came here illegally can jump ahead of other Americans who have been waiting to get the vaccine,” said Scalise, who is also the No. 2 Republican leader in the House. (Knight, 2/9)

One day after receiving her first dose of Moderna’s Covid vaccine, Luz Legaspi, 72, woke up with bruises on her arms and legs, and blisters that bled inside her mouth. She was hospitalized in New York City that day, Jan. 19, with a severe case of immune thrombocytopenia — a lack of platelets, a blood component essential for clotting. The same condition led to the death in January of Dr. Gregory Michael, 56, an obstetrician in Miami Beach whose symptoms appeared three days after he received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Treatments failed to restore his platelets, and after two weeks in the hospital he died from a brain hemorrhage. It is not known whether this blood disorder is related to the Covid vaccines. (Grady, 2/8)

Two days after employees were given their first round of COVID-19 vaccinations, the Fairless Local School District canceled classes, attributing it to many developing side effects and becoming ill. (Nethers, 2/8)

Facebook is expanding its ban on vaccine misinformation and highlighting official information about how and where to get COVID-19 vaccines as governments race to get more people vaccinated. "Health officials and health authorities are in the early stages of trying to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, and experts agree that rolling this out successfully is going to be helping build confidence in vaccines," said Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook's head of health. Social media platforms including Facebook have played a big role in the spread of false claims, hoaxes and conspiracy theories about the pandemic over the last year, despite efforts by tech companies to clamp down on harmful content and promote authoritative sources. (Bond, 2/8)

Dr. Aaron Milstone of Williamson County Medical Center says some of his patients are reluctant to get the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, having heard of potential side effects.While most side effects for the second dose range from fever to chills and muscle soreness, Dr. Milstone says misinformation has been shared across social media to make these side effects appear much worse. (Ismail, 2/8)

House Democrats released the biggest piece of their coronavirus relief bill late Monday, offering a measure that would extend a $400-a-week unemployment insurance payment through Aug. 29 and send $1,400 per-person payments to most households without lowering the income thresholds from earlier rounds. Democrats have been debating whether to reduce those income levels, but the version headed for a Ways and Means Committee vote this week gives the full amounts to individuals with incomes up to $75,000 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000. The legislation also expands the child tax credit, broadens child-care assistance and bolsters tax credits for health insurance. (Rubin and Duehren, 2/8)

House Democrats will move ahead with a coronavirus stimulus package that would keep the existing income limits for Americans who receive stimulus checks, while tightening eligibility for higher-earning Americans — a major win for progressives. The plan, which was unveiled Monday night, would keep $1,400 stimulus checks flowing to Americans making up to $75,000 a year — rather than the $50,000 threshold that some moderate Democrats had proposed. It would, however, tighten eligibility for those making over $75,000 as an individual — a higher-earning group that previously qualified for smaller checks. (Caygle and Ferris, 2/8)

Democrats are plowing forward with plans to pass a massive Covid-19 relief package. And if Republicans don't join them, they won’t forget it. Already, there’s talk about midterm attack ads portraying Republicans as willing to slash taxes for the wealthy but too stingy to cut checks for people struggling during the deadly pandemic. And President Joe Biden’s aides and allies are vowing not to make the same mistakes as previous administrations going into the midterms elections. They are pulling together plans to ensure Americans know about every dollar delivered and job kept because of the bill they’re crafting. And there is confidence that the Covid-19 relief package will ultimately emerge not as a liability for Democrats, but as an election year battering ram. (Cadelago and Korecki, 2/8)

House Democrats are renewing their investigation into the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus crisis, citing new documents and what they call evidence of political interference in the government response to the virus. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., sent letters to White House chief of staff Ron Klain and acting Health and Human Services Secretary Norris Cochran informing them of the investigations and additional evidence. Clyburn cites an internal HHS email that he says includes details of an effort to end testing of asymptomatic infections over concerns that people who test positive would quarantine and suppress the economy. The letter focuses particularly on allegations that Trump administration adviser Dr. Paul Alexander tried to suppress scientific data and pressured members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force to alter public information. (Snell, 2/8)

Pieces of the Covid-19 relief package House Democrats released Monday night include the first major expansion of Affordable Care Act subsidies in more than a decade — a key plank of President Joe Biden’s health care agenda that they hope to pass in the coming weeks. Democrats are hoping that the beefed up subsidies, combined with Biden’s recent executive order to reopen the ACA's markets and advertise heavily to entice people to enroll, will make a major dent in the ranks of uninsured Americans that have grown during the pandemic and ensuing economic recession. (Ollstein, 2/8)

House Democrats' coronavirus relief legislation released Monday would increase the Affordable Care Act's financial assistance for two years, providing greater help for enrollees' to afford their premiums. The measure, one provision in a sweeping COVID-19 relief package, would increase ObamaCare subsidies so that enrollees would have to pay no more than 8.5 percent of their income in health insurance premiums, down from a maximum cap of about 10 percent of income currently. (Sullivan, 2/8)

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — a proposal included in the package of relief measures being pushed by President Biden — would add $54 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office concluded on Monday. Normally, a prediction of increased debt might harm the plan’s political chances. But proponents of the wage hike seized on the forecast as evidence that the hotly contested proposal could survive a procedural challenge under the Senate’s arcane rules. (DeParle, 2/8)

The early weeks of the Biden administration have brought a surge of support, in the White House and across party lines in Congress, for what could be the most ambitious effort in a generation to reduce child poverty. The plans vary in duration, design and the amount they would add to the federal debt, but they share a new and central premise in the policy debate over how to help the poor: that sending monthly payments through tax credits to parents, even if they do not earn income from work, is the best way to help feed, clothe and house children from low-income families. (Tankersley and Cochrane, 2/8)

Support is rising among policy makers to address America’s child-poverty crisis, which is getting worse as the pandemic drags on. More than 8 million Americans -- including many children -- fell into poverty during the second half of last year, exacerbating the racial and income inequalities that are holding back the U.S. economy. As lawmakers debate another round of stimulus, they are ramping up their calls to expand tax breaks for families with children and distribute aid monthly in an effort to help more of America’s most vulnerable citizens. (Saraiva and Davison, 2/9)

Democrats’ bid to expand a popular tax break for children is stirring up ghosts of Clinton-era battles over welfare, which threatens to take the bipartisan sheen off their effort. Buried in their proposal is a plan to scrap decades-old rules pegging whether someone can take the credit, as well as how much they can receive, to how much they earn. Democrats want to expand the credit to as much as $3,600 per child, from the current $2,000, and allow the needy to claim the entire break regardless of how much they make. (Faler, 2/8)

A trio of Black lawmakers on Monday introduced an omnibus bill aimed at combating the significant health inequities that Black mothers face across the country. The Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021 follows a nearly identical legislative package that was introduced in the House in March right before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, though the new legislation includes three additional bills. (Johnson and Hellmann, 2/8)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Monday that funds will soon be available for families struggling to pay funeral costs after losing a loved one to COVID-19. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is operating the $2 billion dollar fund across the country, reimbursing families up to $7,000 for funeral expenses, the New York Democrats said. (Pitofsky, 2/8)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is poised to be a key player on some of the most hot-button issues over the next two years with Democratic control of both the White House and Congress. The Oregon Democrat last week took the reins of a committee that has jurisdiction over major components of the next coronavirus relief package, as well as other top priorities for Democrats. The panel oversees policy areas that impact a wide swath of the economy, including taxes, health care and trade. (Jagoda and Hellmann, 2/8)

Texas Rep. Ron Wright, a 67-year-old Republican from Arlington, died Sunday from COVID-19, according to a statement from his congressional office. He is the first sitting member of Congress to die of the virus. Wright and his wife, Susan, had been admitted to Baylor Hospital in Dallas two weeks ago after testing positive. (Wallace, 2/8)

He said in December 2019 on the House floor he was being treated with “an immunotherapy wonder-drug called Keytruda,” which was approved for his regimen in May 2017. He used the success of the drug to argue against government forcing pharmaceutical companies to offer cancer drugs at lower costs, saying it could kill the innovation required to make the drug. He told Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy in a Jan. 25 text message from Baylor Hospital that he was also facing pneumonia that came with the COVID infection. He said in the text that he was “on the mend.” “We need to package this stuff and send it back to China,” Wright jested in the text. (Hartley, 2/8)

As insurmountable as our current challenges seem, the history of American ingenuity and perseverance leave me confident that these trying times will soon be behind us. After all, Americans have been tested time and time again in ways we never thought possible, and we have always come out on the other side a stronger nation. (Ron Wright, 8/19)

As the White House struggles to address the pandemic and other pressing health matters, a public tug-of-war has emerged over who should be tapped to run the Food and Drug Administration. (Silverman, 2/8)

President Biden will soon have to nominate someone to helm the Food and Drug Administration. His two top contenders couldn’t have more divergent visions for how to lead that agency. (Florko, 2/9)

The Senate on Monday confirmed Denis McDonough as President Biden’s Veterans Affairs secretary, choosing a non-veteran but a manager with years of government service to lead the sprawling health and benefits agency. McDonough, 51, was chief of staff during Barack Obama’s second term and held senior roles on the National Security Council and on Capitol Hill before that. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that although he is not a veteran, his long career as a behind-the-scenes troubleshooter and policymaker would serve him well at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a massive bureaucracy beset by multiple challenges. (Rein, 2/8)

DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg is quarantining for the next 14 days after a member of his security detail tested positive for Covid-19.According to a press statement by DOT chief of staff Laura Schiller, the agent had been in close contact with Buttigieg, “including this morning prior to the agent’s positive result." (Snyder, 2/8)

Andy Slavitt spent the first 10 months of the coronavirus pandemic as a private citizen. During that time he created the popular “In the Bubble” podcast about the virus and used it to raise money for relief efforts. But three weeks ago, the former Medicare and Medicaid chief became senior adviser to President Biden’s coronavirus response team, making him a key player in the federal government’s vaccine rollout as U.S. deaths near half a million. (Winfield Cunningham and Ellerbeck, 2/8)

The Biden administration has sent conflicting signals about when and how to expect schools to reopen, with the White House at times appearing to downplay messaging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). White House press secretary Jen Psaki has sought to minimize the scope of a CDC study that identified schools as low-transmission zones for the coronavirus and has brushed back CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for saying that the science supports the notion that teachers can return to classrooms before they’ve been vaccinated. (Easley and Parnes, 2/8)

Ilyse Hogue, an abortion rights activist who helped lead the fight against former President Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, will step down as president of NARAL, the organization announced Monday. Hogue, who has led NARAL for eight years, did not state what her next career move would be, but her departure comes as Democrats hold unified control of Congress and the White House for the first time in since 2011. (Hellmann, 2/8)

For Ilyse Hogue, who announced on Monday that she was stepping down as the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America after eight years, abortion rights are at something of a crossroads, with Democrats facing the choice of whether to try to deliver on their promise of codifying Roe v. Wade. When she assumed the role of president of the abortion rights group in 2013, the Democratic Party controlled the Senate and the White House and had a reliable liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Eight years later, Democrats are back in power but abortion rights face a precarious future. (Lerer, 2/8)

A bill that would likely ban almost all abortions in South Carolina is expected to move closer to final approval Tuesday. The House Judiciary Committee is meeting to discuss the “ South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act.” The bill has already passed the Senate and the governor promises he will sign it. (Collins, 2/9)

An Arizona Senate panel has approved a measure that bans medical providers from performing an abortion when a fetus has a genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome. A Republican-majority state Senate panel on Thursday approved SB 1457, which includes several anti-abortion provisions. Arizona is among several states attempting to enact abortion regulations as Roe v. Wade's future remains uncertain with a sharply conservative Supreme Court. (Atkins, 2/5)

A set of three abortion-related bills would interfere with the quality of healthcare provided to women in South Dakota and implies lawmakers think women and their families can't make informed decisions about their medical care, clinicians across the state say. Roughly 70 physicians and medical students from Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Vermillion, Huron, Brookings and Madison sent a letter to lawmakers Sunday urging them to vote against bills they say would hinder their ability to "provide compassionate care for our patients when they need us most."  (Ferguson, 2/8)

A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico who voted in favor of a Democratic-backed abortion bill has left the GOP, officials said. House Minority Leader Jim Townsend said on Friday that state Rep. Phelps Anderson of Roswell changed his voter registration to “declined to state” after voting to repeal a 1969 abortion law that bans and criminalizes the procedure. (2/6)

Christine is one of the clinic escort volunteers who accompany patients on their way into the EMW Women's Surgical Center — past the protesters who gather on the West Market Street sidewalk in downtown Louisville. Some protesters offer pamphlets, others walk behind and shout out, "You're a mama!" Others, Christine said, pray, brandish signs, yell into a loudspeaker or hold out a rubber fetus. The coronavirus pandemic hasn't changed most of the protesters' behavior, Christine said. Masks are rare, and protesters are seldom social-distancing. (Costello, 2/9)

Hospitals across Washington state were alerted Friday to pull select N95 masks off their shelves and send them for analysis after an investigation uncovered knockoffs, said the state’s hospital association. The fake masks closely resemble N95 masks manufactured by a company called 3M. The Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA) and other hospital executives told reporters on a call Monday that 3M’s masks are typically in high demand because they come in smaller sizes and allow for a snug fit around the face. (Rivas, 2/8)

Oscar Health has officially filed to go public. The tech-enabled startup insurer filed for its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, where it intends to list its stocks under the ticker OSCR. Details on the plans beyond that were limited. (Minemyer, 2/8)

The Florida data scientist who had accused the state of misrepresenting its COVID-19 data dropped her lawsuit, for now, against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for conducting a raid at her home, her lawyer said on Monday. (Coleman, 2/8)

For frontline health care workers at hospitals, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a punishing slog, punctuated by overflowing morgues, patient beds in gift shops, and dire equipment shortages. But for their lobbyists in Washington, the picture couldn’t be rosier. (Cohrs, 2/9)

When Dr. Stanley Fineman started as an allergist in Atlanta, he told patients they should start taking their medications and prepare for the drippy, sneezy onslaught of pollen season around St. Patrick’s Day. That was about 40 years ago. Now he tells them to start around St. Valentine’s Day. Across the United States and Canada, pollen season is starting 20 days earlier and pollen loads are 21% higher since 1990 and a huge chunk of that is because of global warming, a new study found in Monday’s journal the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. (Borenstein, 2/8)

Nearly 9 million people a year are dying as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, a study has found, roughly twice the previous estimate by the World Health Organization. In the United States, ingesting the fine particulate matter produced by burning fossil fuels kills an estimated 350,000 people a year, including more than 7,600 people in Massachusetts, according to the study by researchers at Harvard and other universities. Researchers linked the pollution to 18 percent of worldwide deaths in 2018, down from 21 percent in 2012. They attributed the decline to improved air-quality policies in China that reduced the use of fossil fuels by more than 40 percent. (Abel, 2/9)

Heart surgeries among U.S. adults dropped by a dramatic 53 percent in the past year, a reduction that cardiac surgeons say was caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The number comes from an analysis of national data through the end of 2020 and included information on 717,103 heart surgery patients and more than 20 million covid-19 patients. The finding was presented at a January meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. (Searing, 2/8)

It's another home run for coffee consumption -- as long as it's black and caffeinated, that is. Drinking one or more cups of plain, leaded coffee a day was associated with a long-term reduced risk of heart failure, according to a review of diet data from three major studies using analytic tools from the American Heart Association. (LaMotte, 2/9)

KHN: Gene Screenings Hold Disease Clues, But Unexplained Anomalies Often Raise Fears

When her gynecologist recommended genetic testing, Mai Tran was reluctant. “I didn’t really want to do it,” recalled Tran, who had just turned 21 and was living in New York City, “but she kept on emailing me about it and was really adamant that I do it.” Tran knew she had an elevated risk of developing breast cancer because of her family history — her mother died of the disease and a maternal aunt was diagnosed and survived. Given this, she planned to follow the standard recommendations to begin breast cancer screenings at an early age. (Bennett, 2/9)

KHN: Native Americans Use Technology To Keep Traditions, Language Alive During Pandemic 

Lawrence Wetsit misses the days when his people would gather by the hundreds and sing the songs that all Assiniboine children are expected to learn by age 15. “We can’t have ceremony without memorizing all of the songs, songs galore,” he said. “We’re not supposed to record them: We have to be there. And when that doesn’t happen in my grandchildren’s life, they may never catch up.” (Reardon, 2/9)

Hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug first approved in the United States in 1955, was used widely throughout the country last spring as an experimental treatment for COVID-19. The drug, often combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, had been touted for months by officials at every level of government — most prominently by then-President Donald Trump. ... Between March and late April last year, the 250-bed New York State Veterans’ Home at St. Albans administered hundreds of doses of the unproven drug combination to at least 62 residents, some of whom had not tested positive for the virus. (Russell, 2/8)

Local and federal authorities are investigating after an attempt Friday to poison the city of Oldsmar’s water supply, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. Someone remotely accessed a computer for the city’s water treatment system and briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, by a factor of more than 100, Gualtieri said at a news conference Monday. The chemical is used in small amounts to control the acidity of water but it’s also a corrosive compound commonly found in household cleaning supplies such as liquid drain cleaners. The city’s water supply was not affected. A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it, Gualtieri said. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said they’ve disabled the remote-access system used in the attack. (Evans, 2/8)

The nation’s largest public school system will take another step toward a full reopening later this month by welcoming middle school students back into classrooms that have been shuttered since November. The about 62,000 New York City middle school students who opted for in-person learning last year will be able to return to classrooms for at least part of the week starting Feb. 25. The city still does not have a plan to reopen its high schools. (Shapiro, 2/8)

Indoor dining will resume in New York City on Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced, two days ahead of the original target date, which will allow eateries to benefit from the full Valentine's Day weekend. During a press briefing Monday, Cuomo said the post-holiday surge of COVID-19 cases is over. The rolling average of cases and hospitalizations have declined over the past week, compared with the past four weeks. (Weixel, 2/8)

ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit legal advocacy group that created a hotline in late March for people to report on conditions at local jails, said that before Saturday’s unrest, the organization had received 60 calls about issues at the St. Louis Justice Center, including concerns about inmates who have tested positive for the coronavirus not being isolated, a lack of recreational time and retribution from guards over complaints. Inmates had staged two protests previously. (Berger and Berman, 2/8)

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner on Monday launched an investigation into conditions at the City Justice Center, a large downtown jail that was the site of a massive disturbance over the weekend. More than 100 detainees on Saturday were able to get out of their cells, smash windows and set fires. A corrections officer was injured and hospitalized but is expected to recover. (2/9)

Two House Democrats have filed a resolution to declare systemic racism a public health and safety crisis in Kentucky, demanding redress across all branches of government in the state. House Joint Resolution 40 was filed last week by Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, and Rep. Attica Scott, D-Louisville, urging Kentucky to follow the lead of similar resolutions passed in Louisville, Lexington "and 143 more local governments across 27 states." (Sonka, 2/9)

Even as President Joe Biden plans to federalize the pandemic response, new COVID-19 variants will force state and local public health agencies to expand their efforts in tracking and responding to the new strains. More contagious variants add to the struggle agencies already face to trace contacts, manage health care across jurisdictions, communicate with the public and vaccinate residents. The stakes are huge: Public health officials worry that if more transmissible variants take hold, an even more dangerous surge could lie ahead, compelling public officials to impose new restrictions, possibly including shutdowns. (Ollove, 2/8)

The coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal, a World Health Organization team has concluded, an expert said Tuesday as the group wrapped up a visit to explore the origins of the virus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China has collected extensive virus samples, leading to allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community. China has strongly rejected that possibility and has promoted other theories for the virus’s origins. The WHO team that visited Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in December 2019, is considering several theories for how the disease first ended up in humans, leading to a pandemic that has now killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide. (Fujiyama, 2/9)

A COVID-19 vaccine produced by CanSino Biologics Inc., a Chinese biotech company, is 65.7 percent effective at preventing symptomatic coronavirus cases, according to a multi-nation study. Faisal Sultan, a special assistant to Pakistan's prime minister, posted about the results of the study on Twitter Monday, adding that the vaccine had been found to be 90.98 percent effective at preventing "severe" cases of the disease. (Bowden, 2/8)

The NHS Covid-19 app has told 1.7 million people in England and Wales to self-isolate to date. Health ministers have also revealed they believe it has prevented about 600,000 cases of the disease. In a further disclosure, internal data indicates that about 16.5 million people are currently actively using its contact-tracing tool. (Kelion, 2/9)

Iran on Tuesday launched a coronavirus inoculation campaign among healthcare professionals with recently delivered Russian Sputnik V vaccines as the country struggles to stem the worst outbreak of the pandemic in the Middle East with its death toll nearing 59,000. At a ceremony marking the start of the campaign, Parsa Namaki, son of Health Minister Saeed Namaki, received his first dose. The minister said the vaccination would be simultaneously carried out in more than 600 medical centers across the country. (2/9)

Pope Francis on Monday offered a grim assessment of humanity's response to the pandemic in a lengthy speech that highlighted aspects big and small from a year of isolation and "despair." He talked about domestic violence in homes under pandemic lockdown. He emphasized the job losses predominantly among off-the-books workers, with no safety net on which to rely. He described a generation of children, alone and in front of their computers, enduring the “educational catastrophe” of school shutdowns or distance learning. The world, Francis said, “is seriously ill.” (Harlan, 2/8)

Gonzales is a small city in central California populated mostly by Latino immigrant families and farmworkers. Like other places, it has felt the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. (Margarita Alegria, 2/9)

On Twitter recently, writer Ann Bauer recounted a meeting she attended with a Minnesota lawmaker about school closures in her area. Parents testified that they’re worried about suicides; a 15-year-old growing up in the wealthy suburb sobbed about how she has gone to a place “so dark, she didn’t know if she’d get out.” Continued lockdowns are killing our kids — literally. A Las Vegas school district saw such a spike in suicide numbers, it rushed forward its reopening plan. The superintendent explained to The New York Times, “When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the COVID numbers we need to look at anymore. We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope.” (Bethany Mandel, 2/8)

When President Biden met on Friday morning in the Oval Office with House Democratic leaders and committee chairs working on his covid-19 rescue plan, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), who leads the Appropriations Committee, noticed that he and Vice President Harris were seated under a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She reminded the president that FDR’s most ambitious domestic initiative, the creation of the Social Security system, assured that 90 percent of senior citizens would not have to end their lives in poverty. DeLauro told Biden that he has the opportunity to do almost as much for the nation’s children by lifting nearly half of the those who currently live in poverty with “the stroke of a pen.” (Karen Tumulty, 2/8)

It’s been a tough 11 months for mothers. For about a millisecond after the onset of the pandemic, I hoped that remote work would cause fathers to finally see all of the myriad household tasks mothers do every day and begin doing their fair share. It didn’t happen. Instead of curing the fairness gap, we got the Great COVID Cop-out. Nearly 80% of mothers have been primarily responsible for doing the housework since March, while 66% are chiefly responsible for the child care among partnered parents. When you look at home schooling, parents’ contributions are even more skewed. (Joan C. Williams, 2/7)

The Biden administration’s recent investment of $230 million to expedite rapid production of the Ellume home Covid-19 test represents an audacious step forward in mitigating the pandemic. Some experts have criticized it as a “waste of money” because this kit costs more than other alternatives and because of the timing of the investment. I believe the test is worth the extra cost, due to its connectivity and the types of research it enables, though all of these tests need to be evaluated against the other options. (Eric D. Perakslis, 2/8)

The U.S. Supreme Court erred late Friday when it ordered California to reverse its ban on indoor faith services for counties in the state’s purple tier, which have extremely high rates of COVID-19 infection. The conservative majority concluded — wrongly, we believe — that the state has been unfairly harsh on houses of worship and thus violated the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion. That’s hogwash, and the tortured justification laid out in Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s opinion in a lawsuit brought by South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista makes it clear that either the majority justices don’t understand how congregational activities pose a unique threat of contagion or just don’t care.

Among the Trump administration’s last and best decisions was to allow almost all physicians to prescribe buprenorphine, one of the most effective treatments for opioid addiction. Previously, only doctors who had completed an eight-hour training course and obtained a license from the Drug Enforcement Administration could do so. Only 7% of physicians are certified to prescribe the drug, and more than half of rural counties lacked a single prescriber as of 2018. (Brian Barnett and Jeremy Weleff, 2/8)

If you want to succeed in just about anything, you need a plan. The same goes for pregnancy. Cindy Lamb’s job is to help as many pregnant people as possible create their ideal birth plan. Cindy is a doula. In Greek, doula means servant to the woman, and Cindy also uses “labor support professional.” “Doctors and nurses punch the clock — doulas don’t,” Lamb says. In fact, doula care is among the most promising approaches to combating disparities in maternal health. Unfortunately, it’s a kind of care that is largely inaccessible to Kentuckians who need it most. Let me be clear: Kentucky is in a maternal mortality crisis. Statistics show that becoming pregnant here is too often a death sentence. And we are moving in the wrong direction: A woman is more than twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes now than in 1987. 

Now that covid-19 vaccines are increasingly becoming available to people beyond health-care workers and those in long-term care, the question turns to who should be immunized next. For many people, the answer is essential workers. But while many workers face an elevated risk and should receive a vaccine soon, we believe the most ethically justified path forward is to focus on individuals 65 and older. The primary reason to prioritize people in this age group is simple: They account for more than 80 percent of covid-19 deaths, even though they are only about 16 percent of the population. This disproportionate toll is why the Biden administration’s vaccine plan encourages states to expand vaccine eligibility to those who are 65 and older. (Ruth R. Faden, Matthew A. Crane and Saad B. Omer, 2/8)

New data suggesting it’s relatively safe to send younger children back to classrooms under strict mask-and-distance requirements could be a crucial element to reopening in-person schooling in the coming months. But the hesitation of teachers to return is understandable — age alone puts them in more danger than their students — which is why any national back-to-school campaign must include putting teachers at or near the front of the vaccination line. Currently, fewer than half the states do that. Of all the ways the pandemic has jolted society, one of the most jolting is what it’s done to kids forced out of the classroom and into remote schooling. The isolation from teachers and classmates, the difficulty of learning via computer screen, and in poor communities the lack of school lunches and other support services has impacted these kids’ lives in devastating ways. (2/7)

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine presents an exceptional opportunity to reduce community spread of the coronavirus by inoculating 18- to 29-year-olds, particularly college students traveling nationwide. Once Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine gains emergency approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, an enhanced supply to states will increase the number of shots available for their inoculation phases. But, maintaining the current strategy would not appropriately reflect how Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, in light of its test results, could be more effectively deployed to contain the spread of COVID-19. (Jonathan Brand, 2/8)

The coronavirus vaccine rollout is well underway and many Americans are growing more confident, hoping to plan their first trip using air transportation in more than a year. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 global health crisis, air travel has plummeted by 95 percent. (Laura Albert, 2/7)

When President Trump referred to the “Chinese virus,” the media were quick to point out problems with this terminology, lambasting it as xenophobic and racist. But as new variants appear, some media outlets are doing the same thing: talk of the “British,” “Brazilian,” and “South African” Covid-19 variants abounds. Even scientific journals are using this terminology. (Katie Baca and Susana Bejar, 2/9)

Sam Fazeli, a Bloomberg Opinion contributor who covers the pharmaceutical industry for Bloomberg Intelligence, answered questions about the wisdom of changing protocols for Covid-19 vaccine dosage as experts in the U.S. and elsewhere weigh tweaks to speed up inoculations ahead of any spread by variants. The conversation has been edited and condensed. (2/8)