What they're saying: “Today’s authorization is yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID-19,” Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in the press release.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday signed into law a bill that bans all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in the state.
Driving the news: The legislation includes no exceptions for rape or incest and only allows abortions past 15 weeks in cases of a medical emergency or if there's a "fatal fetal abnormality."
Planned Parenthood and EMW Women’s Surgical Center, Kentucky's only abortion providers, will not perform the procedure unless the state's new 15-week abortion ban is blocked by the court.
Driving the news: Patients seeking abortions in Kentucky are advised to reach out to the clinic for their first appointment "so that we can coordinate care in Indiana or another state that can provide the care they need," Nicole Erwin, a Kentucky-based Planned Parenthood spokesperson, told Axios.
The economic cost of multiple sclerosis, or MS, was about $85.4 billion in the U.S. in 2019, according to research published Wednesday in the online issue of Neurology.
Driving the news: According to the report, MS has a direct medical cost of $63.3 billion and indirect and non-medical costs of $22.1 billion.
Pfizer-BioNTech said Thursday that, in a trial, a booster dose of its coronavirus vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 increased the level of antibodies that neutralized the original version of the virus and the Omicron variant.
Why it matters: If federal regulators verify the companies' claims, children over the age of 5 could gain access to boosters.
As more states and school districts move to address children's mental health, some parents and activists aremaking school-based support programs a political flashpoint, saying they put school officials in inappropriate roles and could indoctrinate students in progressive thinking.
Why it matters: The pandemic has created a greater sense of urgency around children's mental health, but statistics have beentrending in the wrong direction for years, with sometimes tragic consequences for families and communities.
After two months of plummeting COVID cases across the U.S., the virus is on the rise again, with the Northeast accounting for many of the new cases.
The big picture:We knew this was coming. Now it's just a matter of seeing how large an impact this surge of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron has in the U.S.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is extending its travel mask mandate for two weeks to monitor a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Driving the news: The transportation mask mandate, originally set to expire on April 18, is now in effect until May 3. The mandate applies toplanes, buses, trains and transit hubs.
Major Medicare plans are often inflating how sick their members are — and in at least one example, went so far as to add diagnoses doctors hadn't made — to bilk millions of dollars from the health care system, a whistleblower told Bloomberg.
In one case, a woman was even coded for prostate cancer, according to the report.
A federal task force on Tuesday recommended against routine suicide screening for children and adolescents, saying more research is needed to assess if it could be harmful.
Why it matters: Suicide was the second leading cause of death for ages 10–14 in 2020, according to the CDC, and studies have shown many youths who take their lives have contact with the health care system not long before their deaths.
Nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and pharmacists are pressing for more autonomy to diagnose patients, recommend treatments and write prescriptions, and doctors' aren't pleased.
Why it matters: So-calledscope of practice fights have been going on for decades. But certain emergency powers granted during the pandemic allowed advanced practice providers who were not doctors to provide more services than ever before and reignited the battle in many states.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases have now surpassed 500 million worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
State of play: The actual number of cases among the world's population of 7.9 billion is believed to be much higher, but many are going unreported — and experts are concerned this will worsen as testing is scaled down in some countries, including the U.S., the New York Times reports.
Keeping things moving on the outside is key to gut function as well.The foundation of your health and well-being isn't your heart, your lungs or your brain. It’s your gut.
Chew on this: 70% of your immune system sits in your belly.
Why it matters: You are what you eat. And a healthy gut keeps your body — and mind — from getting sick.
