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 In this study led by researchers from the University of Maryland School f Medicine, Baltimore, hospitalized COVID-19 patients who took low-dose aspirin daily for their heart health had a 47% lower risk of dying in the hospital than those who did not take aspirin. This retrospective analysis of…

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Editor's Note In the October 26 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, an analysis led by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of hospitalization data from 13 states found that 5.9% of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 between March 1 and May 31 were healthcare workers (HCWs). Among…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology is currently developing master protocols to be used in monitoring the safety and effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine once it is authorized or approved, in addition to postmarket surveillance requirements, the October 22 Regulatory Focus reports. The…

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Editor's Note In this study from the Vermont Departments of Health and Corrections and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an officer at a correctional facility in Vermont was found to test positive for the COVID-19 virus on August 11 after multiple brief exposures to six infected incarcerated…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on October 21 updated its COVID-19 “close contact” definition to being “within 6 feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period,” even if the time isn’t consecutive. The previous definition…

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Editor's Note Researchers at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and Mercy Health Saint Mary’s Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan, studied the COVID-19 positivity rate of asymptomatic healthcare workers (HCWs) in a 283-bed teaching hospital, and they to conclude that routine testing of HCWs is unnecessary. To effectively cohort patients,…

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Editor's Note ECRI announced October 21 that its President and CEO, Marcus Schabacker, MD, PhD, will tell the Food & Drug Administration Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on October 22 that a thorough review of 6 months of completed clinical trial data for COVID-19 vaccines is needed to…

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Editor's Note This study, led by researchers from Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center, Houston, is the first to use hydrogen peroxide vapor (HPV) technology on a large scale to reprocess N95 masks in a healthcare system. The researchers were able to recapture and reprocess 29,706 N95 masks using HPV, with…

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