Editor's Note Pfizer and BioNTech announced November 9 that their COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective 7 days after the second dose in preventing COVID-19 infection in participants without evidence of prior infection. This means that protection is achieved 28 days after initiation of the vaccination, which consists of…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on November 5 released a set of toolkits and enrollment actions to take to administer the COVID-19 vaccine when it’s available. Many Medicare-enrolled providers don’t have to take any actions until the vaccine is available. Some Medicare-enrolled providers must also…

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Editor's Note In this analysis of COVID-19 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of preterm live births in women with COVID-19 infection during pregnancy was higher than that in the general population in 2019, suggesting that pregnant women with COVID-19 infection might be at risk…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 3 issued a letter alerting clinical laboratory staff and healthcare providers that false positive results can occur with antigen tests, including when users do not follow instructions for use of antigen tests for the rapid detection of COVID-19. Among the…

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Editor's Note Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has announced plans to test their COVID-19 vaccine in young individuals between the ages of 12 and 18, the October 30 Reuters reports. J&J started testing its vaccine in 60,000 volunteer adults in late September. Depending on safety, J&J also plans to test the…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will penalize and reduce a year’s worth of payments to nearly half of the nation’s hospitals because of 30-day readmission rates, the November 2 Kaiser Health News reports. The penalties are part of the ninth year of the Hospital Readmissions…

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Editor's Note Suspension of elective surgical procedures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York State had only a minor effect on ICU capacity, this study finds. State authorities suspended all elective surgical procedures in mid-March 2020 to increase hospital and ICU bed capacity. However, the effect of canceling…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on October 28 issued an interim final rule that requires CMS to cover any COVID-19 vaccines that receive Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization at no cost to beneficiaries. The rule also will increase what Medicare pays hospitals for COVID-19…

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Editor's Note A state’s stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) were associated with reductions in COVID-19 cases and fatality rates between March and May 2020, and a state’s number of African Americans was associated with more COVID-19 cases and fatalities in this study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Of 3,023 pooled…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on October 28 announced that beginning January 1, 2021, it is eliminating the element of performance (EP) for Infection Control Standard IC.02.04.01, which sets incremental influenza vaccination goals to try and achieve the 90% rate set by national initiatives. The US Department of Health and…

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