In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers have created a dataset and data visualization dashboard to evaluate the effectiveness of state and territory-level policies enacted to reduce the severity of COVID-19's impact on older people served by home health care agencies and nursing homes.
The authors found many policies within states and territories did not correspond with reductions in community or nursing home-level COVID-19 burden (i.e. number of cases and mortality counts). This suggests that policy effectiveness may depend on implementation and compliance. The study also found that policies focused less on home health care agencies compared with nursing homes, despite both settings serving vulnerable older populations.
...genomic surveillance could do much more to reduce the toll of disease and death worldwide than just protect us from COVID-19. Writing inFrontiers in Science, an international collective of clinical and public health microbiologists from the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) calls for investment in technology, capacity, expertise, and collaboration to put genomic surveillance of pathogens at the forefront of future pandemic preparedness.
The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so.
The recent detection of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. cattle, coupled with reports of a dairy worker contracting the virus, demands a departure from the usual reassurances offered by federal health officials. While they emphasize there’s no cause for alarm and assert diligent monitoring, it’s imperative we break from this familiar script.
... In many countries — notably the United States — the pandemic dissolved trust between parts of the community and the public health system. How can that trust be restored? In a word: gradually. Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets.
