Editor's Note Hospital margins are off to a rough start this year, reports Becker’s Hospital Review March 30. According to a March 28 report by Kaufman Hall, the “median operating margin for hospitals and health systems” was down by 11.8% compared to February 2021 and by 42.4% compared to February…

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Editor's Note This study from the UK finds that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were associated with high short-term protection, but this protection waned considerably after 6 months; whereas, infection-acquired immunity boosted with vaccination remained high more than 1 year after COVID-19 infection. Of 35,768 participants analyzed, 9,488 (27%)…

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Editor's Note This French study finds that contact with COVID-19 patients was not the highest risk of COVID-19 in healthcare workers (HCWs). Of 3,234 HCWs enrolled in the study, 120 (3.8%) contracted COVID-19. The highest risk factors were contact with relatives or other HCWs  with COVID-19. Multivariate analysis showed that…

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Editor's Note This cohort study by researchers at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System and Saint Louis University finds that after the first 30 days of infection, COVID-19 patients have increased risks and burdens of incident diabetes and antihyperglycaemic use. A total of 181,280 COVID-19 patients in the US…

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Editor's Note The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) announced on March 28 that it had honored a request by Pacific PPE Corp to rescind all of its N95 respirator mask approvals, effective immediately. Respirators with NIOSH approval numbers TC-84A-9278, TC-84A-9299, and TC-84A-9313 will no longer be manufactured,…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on March 23, identified the recall by Celltrion USA of certain point of care DiaTrust COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test kits (labeled for research use only) as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because the kits were distributed to customers…

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Editor's Note This multi-center study by cancer centers across the US finds that having cancer and COVID-19 is associated with worse outcomes in Black patients compared with White patients. Of 3,506 patients included in the analysis, 1,068 (30%) were Black and 2,438 (70%) were White. At the time of COVID-19…

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What happens when global supply chains—which are already typically operated lean across the board—are hit with a once-in-a-century pandemic? An ongoing, collective lesson in economics. The problem is not hard to understand: COVID-19 shutdowns brought manufacturing to a near standstill, during which time the demand for goods increased, and now there…

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Editor's Note A December 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) report examines how 19 countries mitigated COVID-19’s effects on providing maternal; newborn; child and adolescent; and aging health services, JAMA Network March 15 reports. The WHO data comes from an initiative lasting from May 2020 to February 2021, during which groups…

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Editor's Note According to a March 14 news release from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) launched a Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating three experimental HIV vaccines using the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. The mRNA technology being tested is the same…

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