Peer support valuable intervention for health worker stress during COVID-19, study shows With healthcare worker (HCW) burnout one of the most pressing issues facing US clinicians, a new study in JAMA Network Open indicates that Stress First Aid, a peer-to-peer support intervention, improved the well-being of HCWs compared with usual care during the COVID-19 pandemic. CIDRAP

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UnitedHealthcare CEO says 'maybe a third' of US citizens were affected by recent hack | TechCrunch Two months after hackers broke into Change Healthcare systems stealing and then encrypting company data, it’s still unclear how many Americans were UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty finally gave an estimate of how many Americans were impacted by the hack on the company's subsidiary Change Healthcare. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai TechCrunch

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Study: COVID vaccines not linked to seizures In the vaccine group there were 9 seizure events reported. CIDRAP

... a new meta-analysis of six randomized controlled trials in JAMA Neurology finds no increase in seizures in the month following COVID vaccination. 

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The findings suggest that there is no difference in risk of seizure incidence among vaccinated individuals vs placebo recipients," the authors concluded. "However, the risk of seizure occurrence after SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to be relatively high."

Pasteurization inactivates H5N1 bird flu in milk, new FDA and academic studies confirm Extensive testing of pasteurized commercially purchased milk and other dairy products from 38 states found no evidence of live H5N1 bird flu virus. Megan Molteni STAT

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Hospitals no longer have to report COVID-19 hospitalization data, CDC says (wtvr.com)

Study gauges effectiveness of COVID-19 burden mitigation policies

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.

https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/4636172-new-york-cities-blackouts-climate-change-study/

Climate change is pushing some New York City neighborhoods into dozens of nearly daylong blackouts per year, a new study has found.

Large swaths of the state’s principal towns and cities faced repeated, protracted and dangerous weather-driven power outages between 2017 and 2020, according to findings published Wednesday in the Public Library of Science.

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Global survey shows COVID booster uptake in question A new survey of 23,000 adults in 23 countries taken in October 2023 finds a lower intent to get a COVID-19 booster vaccine (71.6%), compared with 2022 (87.9%). CIDRAP

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Moreover, 60.8% expressed being more willing to get vaccinated for diseases other than COVID-19 as a result of their experiences during the pandemic, while 23.1% reported being less willing. ...

Officials warn of risks to ‘certain groups’ of people amid bird flu outbreak in cows - POLITICO

The Biden administration said Wednesday it’s working to strengthen federal testing guidance and the overall public health response should the bird flu outbreak in cows spread among humans.

State health labs have sent “around 25” human test samples to the CDC for reference testing amid the current dairy outbreak, according to officials. More than 100 workers are being monitored. Officials declined to answer questions from reporters about where in the country the monitored workers are, saying only that officials are “following the herd” of infected cows.

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EU drug watchdog urges COVID-19 vaccine update The EU's drug watchdog urged Tuesday that anti-COVID jabs be updated before another round of vaccinations to counter a new variant of the virus, which is still claiming thousands of lives. Science X Medical Xpress

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The most widely circulating COVID variant worldwide is now JN.1, having overtaken the XBB family that is the target of the most recent vaccines, the European Medicines Agency said.

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Walmart to shut all health clinics in US over lack of profitability Walmart said on Tuesday it will close all 51 of its health clinics and shut its virtual health care operations, saying it could not see it as a sustainable business model to continue. Siddharth Cavale,Granth Vanaik Reuters

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