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AstraZeneca Shot Raised Heart-Related Death Risk in Young Women: Report + More
AstraZeneca Shot Raised Heart-Related Death Risk in Young Women: Report
AstraZeneca‘s COVID vaccine (manufactured and administered in India as Covishield) raised the risk of heart problems, and death by 3.5 times in young women in the first three months following the first dose, according to a report.
The report by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics is based on the impact of COVID infection and vaccination risk on cardiac and all-cause mortality in young people, aged 12 to 29 years, in England. The report included data starting December 8, 2020, when the vaccines were first rolled out in Britain. The mortality data came from two independent sources: deaths registered by June 8, 2022, and hospital deaths by March 31, 2022.
However, the U.K. had, in April 2021, stopped AstraZeneca’s vaccination for young people following safety concerns, and most of the young people who received it would have been prioritized due to clinical vulnerability or being healthcare workers.
According to the statistical model, 11 out of the 15 cardiac deaths in young women that occurred within 12 weeks of a first dose of a non-mRNA vaccine were likely to be linked to the vaccine.
“It’s enough to catch my interest and say we should study this more,” Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was quoted as saying by The New York Times. But “I wouldn’t come close to drawing any causal conclusions.”
What WHO’s New COVID Vaccine Guidance Means for Pfizer and Moderna Stock
The World Health Organization’s newest guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations only recommends regular boosters for older adults and suggests that demand for shots could be weaker in coming years than vaccine makers have anticipated. The WHO’s vaccines advisors said Tuesday they don’t recommend annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters for healthy adults under ages 50 to 60 after they have received their first vaccine and booster, and they no longer recommend vaccinating healthy children or teens against the virus.
The guidance takes into account the diminished threat from COVID-19, and the need to commit resources to vaccinating for other diseases, the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, or SAGE, said Tuesday.
Wall Street analysts expect Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine sales to drop to $6.5 billion in 2024 from $18.4 billion in 2022, according to FactSet, though estimates range widely. Analysts expect Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine sales to drop to $12.1 billion in 2024, from $37.8 billion in 2022, also according to FactSet.
WHO officials also voiced skepticism over the advantages offered by the bivalent vaccines, which Moderna and Pfizer have rolled out in response to FDA requests. At a Tuesday news conference, the organization said there was “minimal evidence” showing that bivalent vaccines are more effective than monovalent vaccines, which specifically target COVID’s original strain.
Biden Won’t Veto Republican-Led Bill Ending COVID Emergency
President Joe Biden won’t veto a Republican-led measure to end the national COVID emergency, despite having expressed strong objections against it earlier this year, ensuring the bill is on an easy path to becoming law.
It marks the second time in the new Congress that the Biden administration has signaled opposition to a Republican measure, rallying most Democrats in Congress to vote against it, only to soften its stance and let the legislation eventually become law.
A White House official said that when the House Republicans were first preparing to vote on the bill at the start of the year, it would have lifted the national emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic in February.
But now, it’s much closer to the White House’s own plan to wind down COVID national emergency status on May 11. The president still strongly opposes the legislation, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the situation. But if this bill comes to Biden’s desk, he will sign it, the official said.
Ex-CDC Head Finally Says What We’ve All Known Forever About the Source of COVID
So I was reading the transcript from former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield’s testimony from earlier this month before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (yes, this is what I do in my spare time).
And I gotta’ say, I missed something kinda’ big. The headlines that came that day from the ex-CDC Chief focused on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Redfield said “sidelined” anyone who dared question him on the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. But the doctor also said something fascinating about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, where scientists were reportedly doing gain-of-function work on coronaviruses — partly funded by U.S. taxpayers at the behest of Fauci.
“In September of 2019, three things happened in that lab,” Redfield said in the hearing. “One is they deleted the sequences. Was highly irregular. Researchers don’t usually like to do that. The second thing they did was they changed the command and control at the lab from civilian control to military control. Highly unusual — and I’ve been involved in dual-use labs when I was in the military.”
“And the third thing they did, which I think is really telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory. So I think, clearly, there was strong evidence that there was a significant event that happened in that laboratory in September,” the doctor said.
COVID Vaccine Fatigue: Study Explores Why Many Are Refusing Booster Shots
As the world continues to move toward a post-pandemic life — and as the World Health Organization (WHO) recently predicted that COVID-19 will end in 2023 as a public health emergency — Americans may have reached a state of “vaccine fatigue,” data suggests.
A recent study published in the journal Nature Medicine, led by researchers from the Medical University of Vienna, surveyed 6,357 people in Austria and Italy. They found that respondents’ “readiness to get vaccinated,” on a scale of 0 to 10, was relatively low — roughly 5.8 in Italy and 5.3 in Austria. The participants answered questions about vaccine-related costs, communication, incentives, emerging variants of the virus and vaccination requirements.
In the U.S., evidence of vaccine fatigue can be seen in the dwindling numbers of people getting boosters for COVID vaccines.
Low trust in medical institutions, governments and vaccinations was a common thread in the study findings, particularly around vaccine mandates. “Respondents in both countries reported high levels of pandemic fatigue and showed low to medium levels of trust in parliament and government,” the study authors wrote in a discussion of the findings.
Vaccine Injury Reports Soared Above ‘Red Line’ After COVID Vaccine Authorizations, Documents Show
The number of vaccine injury reports that poured in after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines caught officials off guard, newly disclosed documents show.
The contractor hired for $9.4 million to process reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System estimated a maximum of 1,000 reports per day — the “worst case scenario” — according to one document. But the number of reports broke through the “red line” on Dec. 26, 2020 — less than three weeks after U.S. regulators authorized COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer.
“Two vaccines have been released since the last report. Since the release, the number of incoming COVID-19 reports has significantly exceeded the estimated maximum of 1,000 reports per day,” General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), the contractor, informed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a status report on Jan. 15, 2021. “As a result, GDIT is unable to meet processing and other timeframes (data processing, telephone inquiries, clinical inqu[i]ries, etc.).”
A chart included in the report showed the number of daily reports was in the thousands, even going above 4,500 on Jan. 10, 2021.
Can COVID Lead to Diabetes? — Early Work Suggests a Connection, but Experts Say More Investigation Is Needed
Since early in the pandemic, physicians have flagged diabetes as a risk factor for worse outcomes with COVID infection, but the relationship may also work the other way: evidence is building that COVID could also be a risk factor for developing diabetes, both type 1 and type 2.
While the science isn’t yet settled, and the exact mechanism that could drive such a relationship isn’t clear, experts say there appears to be a signal that’s worth continued investigation.
“We do see an association, at least, between a COVID infection and an increased risk of being diagnosed with diabetes,” said Alan Kwan, MD, a cardiologist at Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, lead author on a study published last month in JAMA Network Open, cautioning that it’s too soon to say that COVID does indeed cause diabetes.
One plausible mechanism could be “persistent inflammation contributing to insulin resistance,” Kwan and colleagues wrote in their paper, but the exact “mechanisms contributing to post-infection diabetes risk remain unclear.”
Patients Launch Legal Action Against AstraZeneca Over Its COVID Vaccine + More
Patients Launch Legal Action Against AstraZeneca Over Its COVID Vaccine
Dozens of patients and families are launching legal action against AstraZeneca over a rare side effect of its COVID-19 vaccine. Lawyers have sent the company pre-action protocol letters, the first step in a legal claim on behalf of around 75 claimants. Some have lost relatives and some have survived with catastrophic injuries following blood clots.
Peter Todd, a consultant solicitor with Scott-Moncrieff & Associates, one of two lawyers handling claims, told The BMJ that the complications included stroke, heart failure and leg amputations. He said the technology involved in the AstraZeneca vaccine was “risky.”
Even though the legal claim is against AstraZeneca, the U.K. taxpayer will have to pay any compensation awarded, under a legal indemnity that the government gave the company early in the pandemic.
In response to a freedom of information request, NHS Business Services, which operates the vaccine damage scheme, revealed that by March 6, 2023, the scheme had received 4,017 claims relating to a COVID-19 vaccine. Of those which had been dealt with, 622 concerned the AstraZeneca vaccine, 348 the Pfizer, and 43 the Moderna vaccine. Of the 4,017 claims, 334 were for death.
WHO Revises COVID Vaccine Recommendations for Omicron-Era
The World Health Organization has tailored its COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for a new phase of the pandemic, suggesting that healthy children and adolescents may not necessarily need a shot but older, high-risk groups should get a booster between 6 to 12 months after their last vaccine.
The U.N. agency said the aim was to focus efforts on vaccinating those facing the greatest threat of severe disease and death from COVID-19, considering the high-level population immunity worldwide due to widespread infection and vaccination.
The health agency defined high-risk populations as older adults, as well as younger people with other significant risk factors. For this group, the agency recommends an additional shot of the vaccine either 6 or 12 months after the latest dose, based on factors such as age and immunocompromising conditions.
Meanwhile, it said healthy children and adolescents were “low priority” for COVID-19 vaccination, and urged countries to consider factors like disease burden before recommending the vaccination of this group. It said the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters were safe for all ages, but the recommendations took into account other factors like cost-effectiveness.
BioNTech Shares Slip on Gloomy COVID Vaccine Sales Outlook
Shares of BioNTech on Monday slid by more than 6% in morning trading after the German drugmaker shared a gloomy 2023 sales outlook for its COVID vaccine jointly developed with Pfizer.
BioNTech delivered solid quarterly earnings earlier in the morning that beat expectations but said revenue fell slightly from a year ago due to lower demand for the company’s COVID vaccine, which is its only marketed product. The drugmaker expects that demand to fall further this year, forecasting COVID vaccine revenue to hit 5 billion euros, or $5.4 billion. That’s a steep decline from the 17.3 billion euros, or more than $18 billion, in 2022.
BioNTech is the latest company to forecast a slump in demand for COVID products as the world emerges from the pandemic. Its partner Pfizer told investors in January that it expects COVID vaccine sales to plummet by 64% this year and sales of its COVID antiviral treatment Paxlovid to drop by 58%.
Functional Neurological Disorder Emerges After COVID Infection, Vaccines — Long COVID Functional Manifestations Differ From Post-Vaccine Effects
Patients with functional neurologic disorder (FND) after SARS-CoV-2 infection had different symptoms than people with FND after COVID vaccines, retrospective data showed. Patients with post-COVID FND tended to be older, had more insidious onset and had a higher disability, according to Araceli Alonso-Canovas, MD, Ph.D., of Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal in Madrid, and co-authors.
Those with FND after COVID vaccination more closely resembled classic FND: they were younger, had an acute onset and tremor was the most common phenotype, the researchers reported in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
FND refers to disorders caused by an abnormality in brain signaling with no significant structural brain damage. It occurs in an estimated four to 12 people per 100,000 per year and accounts for about 6% of outpatient neurology visits.
Vaccinations can trigger FND, as can other stressors including infections. While experts maintain some people with FND might be long COVID patients, little research has been conducted to evaluate this.
Local Caregivers See Lingering Effects of Pandemic on Kids
The full effects of the global pandemic might not be known for decades to come, but a medical clinic on the front lines of caring for the Hudson Valley’s most vulnerable is reporting that incidents of child abuse and neglect are on the rise in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
“The parent, after being out of work for months during the height of the pandemic, had started a new job, a minimum wage job without a lot of support, and she had to make a decision about going to work or staying home to take care of her child and potentially losing her job,” Lindsay Neptune, a nurse practitioner and Director of School-Based Health Clinical Services at Open Door Family Medical Center in Port Chester and Ossining, explained. “She ended up leaving the child at home.”
According to Open Door, this type of “unintentional” child neglect and abuse, often a result of increased caregiver stress and isolation, has contributed to a troubling spike in cases in New York since the start of the pandemic.
While Neptune says she doesn’t often see the more obvious signs of child abuse or neglect, like bruises, shabby clothing and poor personal hygiene, she does see some of its mental health manifestations, like anxiety and depression.
Walgreens Profit Slides as COVID Vaccinations Fade in Q2
A decline in COVID-19 vaccinations cut into Walgreens’ second-quarter earnings, but the drugstore chain still delivered better-than-expected results.
Walgreens said Tuesday the number of vaccines it administered in the quarter tumbled 80% to 2.4 million compared to last year’s quarter. COVID-19 testing also fell more than 90% and sales of at-home tests dropped as well.
Walgreens also booked in the recently completed second quarter a $306 million pretax charge for opioid claims and some expenses tied to cost-cutting and an acquisition.
The chain also saw prescriptions grow more than 3%, excluding immunizations, in its biggest business segment, U.S. drugstores.
Two-Thirds of U.K. Workers With Long COVID Have Faced Unfair Treatment, Says Report
U.K. ministers should act to ensure long COVID sufferers receive the support they need from employers, with as many as two-thirds claiming they have been unfairly treated at work, a report argues.
The report, from the TUC and the charity Long COVID Support, warns that failing to accommodate the 2 million people who, according to ONS data, may be suffering from long COVID in the U.K. will create, “new, long-lasting inequalities”.
The analysis is based on responses from more than 3,000 long COVID sufferers who agreed to share their experiences.
Two-thirds said they had experienced some form of unfair treatment at work, ranging from harassment to being disbelieved about their symptoms or threatened with disciplinary action. One in seven said they had lost their job.
Manitoba Family Suing AstraZeneca After Son’s Stroke Following COVID Vaccination + More
Manitoba Family Suing AstraZeneca After Son’s Stroke Following COVID Vaccination
A Manitoba family is suing AstraZeneca Canada, alleging their son had a stroke following his COVID-19 vaccination that has left him unable to work or care for himself. Jackson Troy Reimer, now 23, was “in excellent health” before getting vaccinated while working at the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia in 2021, according to a statement of claim filed in Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench on March 16.
But six days after getting his shot, he started feeling dizzy, losing his vision and having severe headaches. A CT scan at Vancouver General Hospital found Reimer had a hemorrhagic stroke, the lawsuit says.
He later needed two platelet infusions, then underwent a craniotomy to stop bleeding in his brain and had to be intubated after becoming unresponsive — all outcomes Reimer and his parents, Marina Dawn Toews Reimer and Perry John Reimer, believe were caused by the vaccine.
Since March 2021, Reimer has been unable to hold gainful employment, advance his university education or carry out many activities of daily living, the court filing says. He’s now legally blind and has other symptoms related to mental focus and concentration, memory loss, mental impairment and obsessive-compulsive disorder tendencies, according to the claim.
The COVID Vaccine King on Biden World’s Nerves
The White House’s relationship with Moderna has deteriorated dramatically over the last two years, marring what should have been one of the most successful public-private partnerships in U.S. history, four people with knowledge of the matter told West Wing Playbook.
At the center of the White House’s disputes with Moderna is a disagreement over how indebted the company should be to the government for the help it got in developing the COVID vaccine. Moderna received an estimated $1.7 billion in federal funds to accelerate the creation of its initial shot. The resulting vaccine offered the U.S. a path out of the pandemic — and represented Moderna’s first and only working product.
The company has since recorded more than $36 billion in sales. Bancel’s own net worth is estimated at $4.7 billion.
Yet despite the government’s investment, Biden officials say Moderna has barely reciprocated in kind. In one episode in 2021, after the president vowed to make the U.S. an “arsenal of vaccines” for the world, Moderna resisted repeated overtures to commit additional doses to help lower-income countries. The administration eventually went public with the battle.
Many CDC Blunders Exaggerated Severity of COVID: Study
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made at least 25 statistical or numerical errors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overwhelming majority exaggerated the severity of the pandemic, according to a new study.
Researchers who have been tracking CDC errors compiled 25 instances where the agency offered demonstrably false information. For each instance, they analyzed whether the error exaggerated or downplayed the severity of COVID-19. Of the 25 instances, 20 exaggerated the severity, the researchers reported in the study, which was published ahead of peer review on March 23.
“The CDC has expressed significant concern about COVID-19 misinformation. In order for the CDC to be a credible source of information, they must improve the accuracy of the data they provide,” the authors wrote.
Most of the errors were about COVID-19’s impact on children. In mid-2021, for instance, the CDC claimed that 4% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were kids. The actual percentage was 0.04%. The CDC eventually corrected the misinformation, months after being alerted to the issue.
White House to Disband COVID Response Team in May
The White House will disband its coronavirus response team after the COVID-19 public health emergency ends in May, a current and former official said.
The team, led most recently by Dr. Ashish Jha, has begun to dwindle in recent months as the administration has started to shift its response to the virus from the emergency that defined the early part of President Joe Biden’s term in office. The team will now be disbanded as the public health emergency is set to expire on May 11.
Under Biden, the COVID-19 response team was responsible for coordinating the nationwide rollout and distribution of vaccines, treatments and medical supplies.
‘Muted’ Immune Response May Explain Why COVID Is Tougher for Obese People
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Obesity is a well-known risk factor for severe COVID-19, and researchers think they’ve uncovered a possible reason why.
Obese folks appear to have a blunted inflammatory response to COVID, leaving their immune systems less capable of fighting it, according to a recent study.
The findings were a surprise to researchers, given that severe COVID often has been tied to an overactive immune response that produces damaging levels of inflammation in humans.
The researchers found the obese patients had underactive immune and inflammatory responses in their lungs. The study was published recently in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Long COVID Risk Factors Are Tied to Gender, Age and Weight
Women, overweight people and those above age 40 are among the groups that have a greater risk of developing long COVID, according to a report published Thursday that makes the case for better pandemic treatment and support.
Researchers also found that patients with preexisting conditions like asthma, diabetes and even anxiety or depression were more likely to develop long-lasting COVID-19 symptoms. Those previously hospitalized or admitted to intensive care for COVID also were at higher risk.
Can an Addiction Drug Treat Long COVID?
When pharmacist Jack Korbutov opened The Art of Medicine, a Philadelphia compounding pharmacy, in September 2012, low-dose naltrexone (LDN) was among the first prescriptions he filled. Before starting his own specialty pharmacy, Korbutov had worked exclusively in traditional establishments and had only encountered naltrexone being prescribed in 50 mg doses to treat opioid addiction and alcohol use disorder.
Digging into the research, Korbutov learned that while naltrexone only has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating people recovering from addiction to heroin, morphine, oxycodone, and alcohol, some doctors prescribe it off-label in much smaller doses for chronic conditions like fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and Crohn’s disease.
This is, in part, because, unlike new-to-the-market blockbuster drugs, pharmaceutical companies don’t stand to profit much from one that’s been around for decades, and, as a result, aren’t spending money promoting it. LDN also has yet to go fully mainstream because the medical establishment has long ignored and dismissed the chronic and invisible conditions it has been used to treat — myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in particular.
Now, some doctors are prescribing LDN for patients with symptoms that develop or persist after a COVID-19 infection: also known as Long COVID. It’s estimated that millions of Americans are living with Long COVID, and without a viable treatment in place, the economic impact of their continued absence from the country’s workforce will be much harder to ignore.
Moderna CEO Defends Fivefold Price Hike of COVID Vaccine During Senate Grilling + More
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel Defends Fivefold Price Hike of COVID Vaccine During Senate Grilling
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel on Wednesday defended the company’s plans to hike the price of its COVID shots fivefold, deflecting pressure at a Senate hearing to abandon the hike while taking barbs over his compensation.
Moderna plans to increase the list price of its vaccine by 400% to $130 when the shots are sold on the private market as early as this fall. The company has been charging the U.S. government about $26 per dose.
Moderna expects demand for the vaccine to fall by 90%, leaving the company will be on the hook for any wasted doses, Bancel said. During the pandemic, the federal government picked up those costs.
Sanders accused Bancel of “profiteering” and “excessive CEO compensation” during his opening remarks. The senator later told Bancel the public doesn’t understand why Moderna is quadrupling the price of the vaccine when the company and its executives have made so much money.
China Suspends Access to Western Scientists Searching for COVID Origins
Western scientists researching the origins of the coronavirus pandemic have had their access to an international database suspended due to a complaint from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that they scooped data from a Chinese study.
The scientists — from the U.S., U.K., Canada and France — on Monday published a paper which said analysis of data from the start of the pandemic lent itself to the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a live animal in a wet market in Wuhan, a theory China supports.
The data, which itself caused controversy after being kept from the international community for three years, mysteriously disappeared from the database shortly after being uploaded in January this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The Chinese CDC contends researchers had removed the data to update their own paper.
The latest controversy only adds to the mystery over the origins of the pandemic, the search for which has been frustrated by obfuscation by China, Western officials have previously said. It comes as a growing number of U.S. intelligence agencies and medical experts are entertaining the possibility that the virus spread into the human population as a result of a lab leak.
Biden Signs Law to Declassify COVID Origins. But …
President Biden this week signed legislation requiring the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information related to the origins of the coronavirus and in particular ties between a bio lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan and the pandemic that swept the globe, killing millions. But …
Let’s back up: Biden said in a statement he was “pleased” to sign the law and wanted to make public “as much information as possible.” The caveat came in the statement’s last line: “In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security,” Biden said.
I flagged that line on Twitter after the statement landed on Monday, wondering how much the president’s interpretation of his authority (and duties) related to classified information would hamstring the release of coronavirus information.
China Approves an mRNA COVID Vaccine, Its First
China has for the first time approved a COVID-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, greenlighting a homegrown shot months after the ruling Communist Party eliminated its strict pandemic restrictions.
China has long refused to use the foreign-made mRNA shots that were crucial in easing the pandemic in many parts of the world and that the United States first authorized for emergency use in December 2020. Beijing chose instead to promote its own pharmaceutical firms, first in rolling out a more traditional but less effective COVID vaccine, and later, in the pursuit of a homegrown mRNA, or messenger RNA, vaccine.
China’s new mRNA vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, was approved for emergency use by China’s health regulator, according to a statement from the company on Wednesday.
Rand Paul Dings ‘Self-Interested’ Fauci, Lab-Leak Critics, Scoffs at Biden ‘Caveats’ on COVID Info
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. pointed chiefly to frequent foil Dr. Anthony Fauci. “The people of America should realize that the people saying it didn’t come from a lab are self-interested,” Paul said.
“Tony Fauci approved and gave the money to the lab in Wuhan. So by proving that, he has and shares some culpability in the origins of this virus. So he’s always going to deny that it came from the lab because it comes back to his reputation for having the incredibly poor judgment to send this money to Wuhan.”
“So … the machinery of government over there is biased, and they’re never going to admit to this. But if you talk to the real scientists — and there’s dozens and dozens of eminent virologists now who have come to the conclusion this came from the lab,” Paul said.
The Kentucky senator argued most venerable experts would still want to seek policy reforms to make sure the U.S. no longer funds gain-of-function research credited with creating the pandemic‘s contagion — citing 12 purported American laboratories where similar study is still conducted.
Steps Have Dropped Since COVID and the Trend Is Worrisome, Study Says
Americans took fewer steps during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they still haven’t gotten their mojo back, a new study found. “On average, people are taking about 600 fewer steps per day than before the pandemic began,” said study author Dr. Evan Brittain, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
Oddly, it was younger people between 18 and 30 whose step counts were most impacted, Brittain said. “In fact, we found every 10-year decrease in age was associated with a 243-step reduction per day.”
Younger generations make up the majority of workers in technology, software and other professions that are able to work from anywhere, “whereas older people may have less of those jobs,” said Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health, a hospital in Denver, who was not involved in the research.
Whatever the reason, the study data shows that people were not moving as much during the pandemic as they used to. That is worrisome, Freeman added.
End of COVID Emergency Will Usher in Changes Across the U.S. Health System
The Biden administration’s decision to end the COVID-19 public health emergency in May will institute sweeping changes across the healthcare system that go far beyond many people having to pay more for COVID tests.
In response to the pandemic, the federal government in 2020 suspended many of its rules on how care is delivered. That transformed essentially every corner of American healthcare — from hospitals and nursing homes to public health and treatment for people recovering from addiction.
The end of the emergency means nursing homes will have to meet higher standards for training workers.
A looming rollback of broader access to buprenorphine, an important medication for people in recovery from opioid addiction, is alarming patients and doctors. Amid a national epidemic of opioid addiction, if the expanded policy for buprenorphine ends, “thousands of people are going to die,” said Ryan Hampton, an activist who is in recovery.