CIA Director Bill Burns is the latest person to come down with the coronavirus after being in contact with President Biden.
Why it matters: Although mask and other mandates are receding throughout the country, the risk of the leader of the free world contracting COVID-19 looms. Burns tested positive on Thursday, a day after meeting with Biden.
The goal of reaching an era of individualized precision medicine will first require a closer look at the broader population.
The big picture: Large clinical trials and massive databases of de-identified genetic and other health information — sometimes from generations of populations — are offering scientists and doctors data to decipher why certain individuals have a higher risk of disease or different responses to treatments.
COVID vaccine supply struggles are easing, but in 44 countries — most of them in Africa — less than 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. In 19, the rate is under 10%.
The big picture: Those countries "have doses now, and they know that there are more doses available," says Seth Berkley, CEO of the Gavi vaccine alliance and point person for the global COVAX initiative. After a year of waiting for vaccine doses, the primary concern is now delivery.
Congress is pressing ahead with plans to limit the cost of insulin to $35 a month — an effort that could be the closest Democrats get to making good on campaign pledges to rein in drug costs.
Why it matters: But while capping out-of-pocket costs for insulin might be a political winner in an election year, it could wind up costing the government billions in lost revenue and swelling the deficit.
Pregnancy nearly doubles the chances a person will have a breakthrough COVID-19 infection, according to new study released Thursday.
Why it matters: The findings, from Wisconsin-based company Epic, analyzed millions of patient records to home in on what comorbidities increase a person's risk of contracting the coronavirus while fully vaccinated. Pregnancy topped the list, according to the findings first reported by the Washington Post.
CIA Director William Burns, 65, tested positive for COVID-19 from a routine PCR test, the agency said Thursday.
Driving the news: Burns last saw President Biden Wednesday morning "in a socially distanced meeting, and was wearing an N-95 mask. Their interaction is not considered close contact as defined by CDC guidance," the CIA said in a news release.
The anti-parasitic ivermectin does not reduce the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization, according to a new study published Wednesday.
Driving the news: "Treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of COVID-19," the study's authors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
After plummeting for several weeks, the number of new COVID cases in the U.S. has largely leveled off.
Driving the news: The CDC confirmed this week the Omicron subvariant BA.2, which has been driving surges of COVID elsewhere around the world, has become the dominant strain circulating in the U.S.
The decades-long debate over whether the federal government can and should use its legal muscle to lower prescription drug prices may be reaching an inflection point, especially with President Biden's drug pricing agenda stalled on Capitol Hill.
Why it matters: Democrats would love to be able to show voters they've acted to lower drug prices before the November midterms, and progressive groups are urging them to so both legislatively and administratively. But taking on pharma through executive action risks uncertain legal outcomes, and opponents say that it could have a chilling effect on innovation.
