Category: Health

New Yorker Charlie Freyre’s sinuses had been bothering him for weeks last winter, during a COVID-19 surge in the city. It was before vaccines became widely available.

“I was just trying to stay in my apartment as much as possible,” Freyre says, so checking in with his doctor via an online appointment “just seemed like a more convenient option. And you know, it was very straightforward and very easy.”

The $20 copay was well worth it for the 26-year-old ad salesman, whose girlfriend also routinely relies on telehealth to see her nutritionist. “It’s a very easy way to get an expert opinion without having to necessarily leave your apartment,” fill out forms or spend idle time in waiting rooms, Freyre says. “We all know what going to the doctor can be like.”But now, Freyre has a sore knee — and he’s not content to to visit his doctor by phone or Zoom. “That’s something that I will 100% want handled in person.”

Freyre’s telehealth experience is fairly typical. Telehealth is continuing to have its breakout moment — transforming the way we receive routine medical care during the pandemic, when visiting medical centers has carried with it the risk of coronavirus infection. Yet even today, with that infection risk easing for those who have been vaccinated, many patients nevertheless prefer that doctors, nurses and other health workers be able to examine and talk to them in person.

That’s one finding from a poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard that surveyed patients in August and September. Around 42% of respondents said someone in their household had used telehealth. Of those, 82% reported satisfaction, yet nearly two-thirds — 64% — would have preferred to see their nurse or doctor in person.

In-person visits can be more thorough

“I think people just really like that face-to-face visit,” says Rebekah Bernard, a Fort Myer, Fla., family physician, and a board member of Physicians for Patient Protection, which advocates for better patient care. Bernard, who runs a concierge medical practice that charges patients a flat monthly fee for services, says she started offering telehealth options to her patients five years ago, long before COVID-19 hit U.S. shores. Back then, not one of her patients used it. That changed during the pandemic, when patients told her having the telehealth option allayed their worries about getting safe access to health care.

That sort of shift in acceptance and how it’s used may have big implications for telehealth’s role in the U.S. in the future. It’s use by various physical and mental health specialties grew tremendously in 2020, as federal and state governments and insurance companies adopted emergency COVID-19 measures, relaxing restrictions on coverage, privacy controls and professional licensing, for example. Now, some of those rules regarding telehealth appointments are being reinstated.

Bernard, the physician in Florida, says the last year has also shown her the limits and downsides of telehealth: “You may be missing that opportunity to be talking with the doctor who’s going to say, ‘Hey, by the way, I see you haven’t had your mammogram or you haven’t had your pap [smear].’ ”

Both she and most patients prefer in-person visits, because it is both more personal, thorough and ultimately, she says, better for the patients’ health.

A lifeline in rural areas

But when and where such visits aren’t available, she says, telehealth can be critical. “What’s going to be important is offering patients options and finding out what makes the most sense in a certain area,” she says. “I’m sure in rural areas or places where, for example, they don’t have a lot of specialists like psychiatrists, we really need to make sure we have access to telehealth for those patients.”

Myriad telehealth companies are already investing to make that happen.

New York City-based TytoCare, helps medical centers and doctors gather data on patients remotely by distributing devices that can sensitively measure patients’ oxygen levels or take images of the inside of their throat, for example. David Bardan, a vice president at TytoCare, says that data is then transmitted to doctors, who use it diagnose medical problems.

Nursing homes in rural areas, for example, are heavy users of the service, he says. “This is way more convenient than having to potentially air-transport or even having to drive long distances, in many cases, to access those specialists,” he says. That’s the sort of circumstance where telehealth excels, Barden says — and he believes those applications of telehealth will endure.

The 15th annual Global Healthcare Summit (GHS) 2022, organized by the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, will be held at the prestigious Hotel Avasa in Hyderabad, India from January 5th to 7th, 2022.

“Harnessing the power of Indian Doctors worldwide, the AAPI Global Healthcare Summit platform has evolved with the support of prominent global and Indian medical associations,” says Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President of AAPI. “The theme for the Summit this year is, ‘Prevention Is Better Than Cure Through Technology, Telemedicine & Transformation’ and we want to coordinate and collaborate all our resources towards helping India emerge stronger and healthier.”

According to her, “Senior leaders from leading healthcare organizations such as pharmaceuticals, device and medical equipment manufacturers and major medical teaching institutions, hospitals and from the Ministries – Health, External/Overseas Affairs and regulatory bodies are collaborating with AAPI with the ultimate goal to provide access to high quality and affordable healthcare to all people of India.”

AAPI is hopeful that several international healthcare industry partners are looking for opportunities to participate at this event for greater collaboration on Research & Development and philanthropic engagements, Dr. Gotimukula added.  Chronic diseases, notably diabetes, cardiovascular, hypertension, COPD, oncology, maternal and infant mortality, and emerging ones – trauma and head injury, transplant and minimally invasive robotic surgeries are only some of those that are going to be covered during this Summit. An exclusive Healthcare CEO forum brings the healthcare industry perspective, with senior Government officials, both Union and State providing the legislative wisdom. Hands-on workshops provide supervised skill transfer.

“Physicians and delegates  from different parts of the world will come together, facilitating exchange of knowledge,  cutting edge technology  and best practices in protecting and promoting healthcare,” Dr. Udaya Shivangi, Chair of AAPI GHS USA 2021 says. “In addition to continuing the ongoing projects commenced by past AAPI leaders, GHS will have new initiatives and innovative ideas. The GHS 2022 will focus on envisioning future digital health solutions, and preventive strategies with state of the art CMEs and  Symposiums with information on current and emerging issues and trends in healthcare.”While elaborating on the themes and areas that are going to be covered during the Summit, Dr. Kusum Punjabi, Chair of AAPI BOT, says, “In our efforts to realize the core mission of AAPI, which is to share the best from leading experts from around the world, to collaborate on clinical challenges, research and development, philanthropy, policy and standards formulation, the Summit in Hyderabad will have clinical tracks that are of vital to healthcare in India.”

Dr. Ravi Kolli, President-Elect of AAPI said, “Healthcare in India is one of the largest sectors, in terms of revenue and employment.  India is making significant improvements in the healthcare infrastructure and is building modern medical facilities throughout India. Indian doctors have made tremendous progress in the 21st century and India is now being touted as a medical tourism hub” While elaborating the objectives of the Summit, Dr. Anjana Samadder, Vice President of AAPI, says, “This innovative Summit is aimed at advancing the accessibility, affordability and the quality of world-class healthcare to the people of India. Among other areas, the Summit will focus on prevention, diagnosis, treatment options and share ways to truly improve healthcare transcending global boundaries.”

This international health care summit is a progressive transformation from the first Indo-US Healthcare Summit launched by AAPI USA in 2007. Since then, AAPI has organized 14 Indo – US/Global Healthcare Summits and developed strategic alliances with various organizations. “It is these learning and relationships that have now enabled AAPI and participating organizations to plan ahead and prepare for an outstanding event that is expected to have over 300 very prominent and talented physicians and surgeons of Indian origin from around the world and are very passionate about serving their homeland, Mother India,” Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Secretary of AAPI, says.

According to Dr. Krishan Kumar, Treasurer of AAPI, “With the changing trends and statistics in healthcare, both in India and US, we are refocusing our mission and vision, AAPI would like to make a positive and meaningful impact on the healthcare delivery system both in the US and in India.”There are several AAPI leaders who are working very hard to make the GHS a memorable event, said Dr. Gotimukula. “Among them, I want to recognize Dr. Lokesh Edara, Chair Global Medical Education; Dr. Seema Arora, Women’s Forum; Dr. Joseph M. Chalil, Chair of CEO Forum; Dr. Soumya Neravetla, Chair of the popular Medical Jeopardy; Dr. Ayesha Singh and Dr. Shubham Anand, GAIIMS President, who are coordinating the Medical Students Research Symposium.”

“Being organized at this critical phase, GHS 2022 is aimed at exploring possibilities for greater collaboration and cooperation between the physicians and health care providers in India with those of Indian origin and major health-care providers abroad,” Dr. Gotimukula said. For more information, please visit www.aapiusa.org/ https://summit.aapiusa.org

The United States reached its latest heartbreaking pandemic milestone, eclipsing 700,000 deaths from COVID-19 just as the surge from the delta variant is starting to slow down and give overwhelmed hospitals some relief, reports here suggest. It took 3 ½ months for the U.S. to go from 600,000 to 700,000 deaths, driven by the Delta variant’s rampant spread through unvaccinated Americans. The latest milestone is deeply frustrating to public health leaders and medical professionals on the front lines because vaccines have been available to all eligible Americans for nearly six months and the shots overwhelmingly protect against hospitalizations and death. An estimated 70 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, providing kindling for the variant.

Health experts say the fourth wave of the pandemic has peaked overall in the U.S., particularly in the Deep South, where hospitals were stretched to the limit weeks ago. But many Northern states are still struggling with rising cases, and what’s ahead for winter is far less clear.  Unknowns include how flu season may strain already depleted hospital staffs and whether those who have refused to get vaccinated will change their minds.

An estimated 70 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, providing kindling for the highly contagious delta variant.  “If you’re not vaccinated or have protection from natural infection, this virus will find you,” warned Mike Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Nationwide, the number of people now in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen to somewhere around 75,000 from over 93,000 in early September. New cases are on the downswing at about 112,000 per day on average, a drop of about one-third over the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Deaths, too, appear to be declining, averaging about 1,900 a day versus more than 2,000 about a week ago. The easing of the summer surge has been attributed to more mask wearing and more people getting vaccinated. The decrease in case numbers could also be due to the virus having burned through susceptible people and running out of fuel in some places.

In another promising development, Merck said its experimental pill for people sick with COVID-19 reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half. If it wins authorization from regulators, it will be the first pill for treating COVID-19 — and an important, easy-to-use new weapon in the arsenal against the pandemic.

All treatments now authorized in the U.S. against the coronavirus require an IV or injection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, warned on Friday that some may see the encouraging trends as a reason to remain unvaccinated. “It’s good news we’re starting to see the curves” coming down, he said. “That is not an excuse to walk away from the issue of needing to get vaccinated.”

Nisha Foundation organized a salutation evening with for doctors and frontline workers in the presence of Faggan Singh Kulstey, the Union Steel Minster of State, and various monks from the DALAI LAMA’s organization, sisters and brothers from Brahmakumaris, Dr Roger Gopalu (Ambassador of Trinidad), Dr. Sandeep Marwah, CEO Film City Noida, Diplomats and 35 awardees doctors, nurses, managing staff and social workers.

The Governor of Sikkim, Ganga Prasad, praised the foundation initiative and congratulated all the awardees. He launched the stickers, “I Salute Doctors”, in the presence of all the dignitaries. He said Nisha foundation is working towards a wonderful mission for betterment of society. Kulstey said Nisha foundation initiative is great and he applaud this program and appreciated Nisha foundation for working in 173 countries in association of world Organization of peace for child education, sports and salutation evening in name of frontliners During his speech he said it’s important to do this kind of programs to uplift human consciousness and he expressed his concern for farmers.

Nisha Foundation organized a salutation evening with for doctors and frontline workers in the presence of Faggan Singh Kulstey, the Union Steel Minster of State, and various monks from the DALAI LAMA’s organization, sisters and brothers from Brahmakumaris, Dr Roger Gopalu (Ambassador of Trinidad), Dr. Sandeep Marwah, CEO Film City Noida, Diplomats and 35 awardees doctors, nurses, managing staff and social workers.

The Governor of Sikkim, Ganga Prasad, praised the foundation initiative and congratulated all the awardees. He launched the stickers, “I Salute Doctors”, in the presence of all the dignitaries. He said Nisha foundation is working towards a wonderful mission for betterment of society. Kulstey said Nisha foundation initiative is great and he applaud this program and appreciated Nisha foundation for working in 173 countries in association of world Organization of peace for child education, sports and salutation evening in name of frontliners During his speech he said it’s important to do this kind of programs to uplift human consciousness and he expressed his concern for farmers.

This program objective was to facilitate the awards to 20 Doctors and 10 Frontline Workers. Few of the honorees are Dr. Raja Marimuthu Chairperson of Covid in Chennai, Nurse Sita Ghimirey from AIMS, Dr. Vinay Bhasin – AIIMS, Dr. Mosin Ali, Nurse Monika Dhankar.

Nisha Foundation Chairperson Priyanka Kothari, an accomplished former Bollywood actress who has worked in various movies in Indian film industry. While travelling for her movie shoots to different rural areas, she felt that there is huge need to support and uplift unprivileged people in many aspects, sports, women empowerment and she left film industry and dedicated herself to the service of humanity. she is an actress turned philanthropist, Motivational speaker, and an accomplished yoga teacher. Her NGO supports other NGO’s as well to uplift and support child education, woman empowerment, sports, and other activities.

She is working in 173 countries with association of OMPP.  She is Secretory general of world Organization of peace (Asia).  Also, Nisha Foundation recently honored with Citation from Eric Adam who is a President of the Borough of Brooklyn, New York USA, for work to support “BETI BACHAO BETI PADHAO” and spreading peace and compassion to humanity.

She believes “our life’s journey is all about uplifting human consciousness and help each other to reach our maximum potential indeed that’s our destiny, Said we have learnt from this pandemic time that “life is too short and there is no time of hate”  We must spread love compassion peace to humanity and expressed gratitude for each and every frontline workers  with standing ovation she said this award ceremony not only for awardee list rather it’s for those unknown volunteers and helpers who served during pandemic.

Kothari Started Her speech with Sanskrit shloka and welcome all the Guest and Audience, furthermore she explained about the foundation objections and goals & she also Remembered the President and Co-founder of Nisha foundation Late Shri Bhasker Prakash Ji whom we lost in this Pandemic with having teary eyes Priyanka Ji bravely continued her speech.

COVID-19 Pandemic has claimed as many as 696,867 lives in the United States, which is more than the number of people killed by the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19.

As of September 22^nd, COVID-19 Pandemic has claimed as many as 696,867 lives in the United States, which is more than the number of people killed by the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. As per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Spanish Flu had killed 675,000 Americans a century ago. The Spanish flu’s U.S. death toll is a rough guess, given the incomplete records of the era and the poor scientific understanding of what caused the illness.

Across the world, the 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter the population it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million. For now, the pandemic still has the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws. While the delta-fueled surge in infections may have peaked, U.S. deaths are running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March, and the country’s overall toll topped 675,000 on Monday, September 20th, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number is believed to be higher.

Winter may bring a new surge, with the University of Washington’s influential model projecting an additional 100,000 or so Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, which would bring the overall U.S. toll to 776,000. Historian and author John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” writes, “It was considerably worse than we’ve seen now — there were special trains to carry away the dead,” during the century-old plague with its 675,000 deaths against the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time. Like the Spanish flu, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope it becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That could take time.  “We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years.

The ebbing of COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also gain some immunity from their mothers. Under that optimistic scenario, schoolchildren would get mild illness that trains their immune systems. As they grow up, the children would carry the immune response memory, so that when they are old and vulnerable, the coronavirus would be no more dangerous than cold viruses.

The same goes for today’s vaccinated teens: Their immune systems would get stronger through the shots and mild infections. “We will all get infected,” Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.” Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but immunity acquired through infection and vaccination has triumphed.

Getting an annual flu shot now protects against H1N1 and several other strains of flu. To be sure, flu kills between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans each year, but on average, it is a seasonal problem and a manageable one. Before COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu was universally considered the worst pandemic disease in human history. Whether the current scourge ultimately proves deadlier is unclear. In many ways, the 1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse.

Spread by the mobility of World War I, it killed young, healthy adults in vast numbers. No vaccine existed to slow it, and there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections. And, of course, the world was much smaller. Yet jet travel and mass migrations threaten to increase the toll of the current pandemic. Much of the world is unvaccinated. And the coronavirus has been full of surprises. Just under 64% of the U.S. population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts to lows around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi.

Globally, about 43% of the population has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first shots. “We know that all pandemics come to an end,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown, director of emergency care research at the National Institutes of Health, who wrote a book on influenza. “They can do terrible things while they’re raging.” COVID-19 could have been far less lethal in the U.S. if more people had gotten vaccinated faster, “and we still have an opportunity to turn it around,” Brown said. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to take these things for granted.”

The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far. It will be crucial for scientists to make sure the ever-mutating virus hasn’t changed enough to evade vaccines or to cause severe illness in unvaccinated children, Antia said. If the virus changes significantly, a new vaccine using the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna shots could be produced in 110 days, a Pfizer executive said Wednesday. The company is studying whether annual shots with the current vaccine will be required to keep immunity high.

One plus: The coronavirus mutates at a slower pace than flu viruses, making it a more stable target for vaccination, said Ann Marie Kimball, a retired University of Washington professor of epidemiology. So, will the current pandemic unseat the 1918-19 flu pandemic as the worst in human history?

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) committee voted unanimously Friday, last week to recommend booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for those over age 65 and those at higher risk of exposure to the virus, including healthcare, frontline and essential workers, under emergency use authorization, but stopped short of recommending boosters for the general population.  Pfizer-BioNTech had originally requested that the FDA consider full approval of a booster dose for all people who have been vaccinated with its shot. The 18 members of the committee voted initially 16 to 2 against that move, citing the lack of strong enough data on safety and effectiveness of boosting the general population at this time. The FDA then reworded Pfizer-BioNTech’s original request to include only those at highest risk of COVID-19, which earned a unanimous vote in favor.

Although the result wasn’t what Pfizer-BioNTech expected, Kathrin Jansen, senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said in a statement that “these data, and the larger body of scientific evidence presented at the meeting, underscore our belief that boosters will be a critical tool in the ongoing effort to control the spread of this virus. We thank the committee for their thoughtful review of the data and will work with the FDA following today’s meeting to address the committee’s questions, as we continue to believe in the benefits of a booster dose for a broader population.”

The FDA’s acting commissioner, Janet Woodcock, will take the committee’s recommendation into consideration before making a final decision. If the FDA follows the advice, then the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will review the data and make a recommendation to doctors and health care workers about how the booster will be administered. One important question the ACIP must address, for example, is whether Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster dose should be limited to those who have already received two doses of the companies’ vaccine, since the data reviewed by the FDA committee only included a small subset of those recipients and not people who received the other authorized shots from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson-Janssen.

The committee advised that most of the U.S. population will have to wait to get a booster dose, guidance that directly contradicts the recommendation by U.S. President Joe Biden’s health team, which planned to start widely rolling out boosters on Sept. 20, pending FDA authorization or approval. The decision heightens the growing tension over the booster question, as public health officials, infectious disease specialists and policy makers disagree about exactly how useful another dose of COVID-19 vaccine can be. The FDA committee members noted that while there is evidence that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time, giving fully vaccinated people another dose of vaccine will likely have little impact on actually controlling the pandemic in the U.S., since most new cases and severe illnesses are driven by the unvaccinated.

The White House, however, escalated the debate when it announced in August that it supported rolling out a booster dose for the general population beginning Sept. 20, even before the FDA had reviewed the safety and efficacy of doing so. It was a surprising pre-emptive move that the administration said was primarily an attempt to get ahead of the logistics of administering another dose, and to prepare states and local health authorities, but many felt was more driven by political rather than scientific justification. Over Friday’s day-long meeting, the committee members debated the strength and quality of data showing waning protection among everyone who has been vaccinated so far, and what it means for controlling transmission and spread of COVID-19. The panel members heard from Israeli public health officials, who have the most in depth, although still incomplete, data on waning immunity and the impact of a booster dose, as well as U.S. CDC researchers who understand the dynamics of the U.S. pandemic.

In making its case for a booster, Pfizer-BioNTech acknowledged that about a month after the second of the two doses in the regimen, its vaccine is 96% efficacious in protecting people from symptoms of COVID-19. About two to four months later, that efficacy slips to 90%, and by six months, it drops to 84%—about a 6% decline every two months. And while Pfizer-BioNTech provided data showing an additional dose of its vaccine could increase levels of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, it did not provide answers to questions about how well that protection could stop transmission of the disease, among other things, to the committee’s satisfaction. The lack of adequate safety data of the third dose among younger people, who are at higher risk of developing rare inflammation of heart tissue, was also among the reasons the committee decided not to recommend the booster at this time for the general population, citing the need for more evidence to support safety, to guide mixing and matching doses, and the impact a booster dose would have on transmission of the virus.

The information on mixing and matching doses is coming shortly from various studies investigating what types of immune reactions people generate if they receive one type of vaccine and get boosted with another; the results have been submitted to a journal but not published yet. Data on the safety could be collected in coming months as more younger get vaccinated and are followed, and scientists in Israel are also studying how a third dose affects transmission of the virus in the population.

Pfizer-BioNTech maintains that protection from its vaccine remains high enough to shield people from severe illness and in most cases, hospitalization and death; most vaccinated people who get infected experience mild disease. But there are worrying signs that with the Delta variant, the more transmissible variant that is now the dominant virus behind new infections, even that trend is changing. In Israel, more vaccinated people getting breakthrough infections are also getting more severe disease. Pfizer scientists say that the data suggest not that Delta is finding ways to escape the vaccine defenses, but that the protection from the vaccine is weakening.

The data showed that overall, after the first dose of the two-dose regimen, levels of antibodies that can neutralize SARS-CoV-2 remain low, which is why the company and the FDA initially recommended a second dose, three weeks later, when the vaccine was first authorized in Dec. 2020. The first dose helped to prime the immune system and educate immune cells to recognize the COVID-19 virus, while the second dose activated those cells more robustly.

Taken together, Pfizer-BioNTech maintained the data, as well as the continuing threat of Delta and potentially other new variants, warrant a booster. The FDA, however, countered that existing protection, especially against more severe disease, remains sufficient, and that the data don’t show that the decline in immunity necessarily puts people at risk. Members of the panel also raised concerns about the strength of evidence supporting a booster dose at this time, at least for the general population, noting the relatively small number of people in the Pfizer-BioNTech study and the short period of follow up especially for younger people. “It feels like there is a lot of data circulating that would be helpful to our discussion but is not available at this moment because it will be presented soon, so at this moment it is difficult to make a decision on [general] booster doses today,” said Dr. Steven Pergam, medical director at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

The committee members noted that because the recommendation is under EUA, it could be revised as more data come in to support the need to broaden the groups eligible for a booster dose. For now, they say, the focus should be on continuing to reach people who haven’t been vaccinated at all; that will likely have the biggest impact on slowing the spread of the virus and ultimately getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

Continuing with its magnificent efforts to help their motherland, members of American Associati9on of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the premier medical organization in the United States initiated Adopt-A-Village, a Rural Health Initiative in India during a virtual launch event on Friday, August 27, 2021. Chaired by, Dr. Satheesh Kathula, the much needed and popular program has Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, Dr. Jagan Ailinani and Dr. Ram Singh as members of the Committee.

In a rare show of support for AAPI, honorable Consul Generals of Chicago, New York, Houston, Atlanta and the Deputy CG of San Francisco participated live during the launch of this noble initiative. Ambassador of India to US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu joined the meeting with his message and lauded the numerous efforts of AAPI for India, especially during the pandemic.

Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President, AAPI, in her welcome address, referred to the objectives of Adopt-A-Village. “A lot of efforts is being put into this initiative, “Adopt a Village” Project where AAPI in collaboration with Global TeleClinics, Inc., plans to adopt 75 villages in honor of 75 years of India’s independence,” she said.  “As India celebrates her 75th anniversary Independence Day celebrations, AAPI has planned to adopt 75 villages in India spread across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, where the rural people of India will be offered ‘Free Health Screenings in 75 Rural Villages’ for Anemia (CBC), DM (HbA1C), High Cholesterol, CKD, Malnutrition, Kidney Disease, Malnutrition, Obesity, and Hypoxemia.  Results analyzed by GTC and further action recommended by their team of experts will be also, followed up. This is a small contribution from AAPI to Mother India in celebration of Azadi Ka  Amrut Mahotsav.” Dr. Anupama thanked the AAPI members for their generous support for this noble work of AAPI and for sponsoring their ancestral villages and going back to their roots.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Chairman of AAPI’s Adopt A Village Program pointed out about the need for this noble initiative. He said, India has nearly 700,000 villages. Three out of four Indians and about 77 percent of the poor live in villages. The majority of the population has no access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The needs in these rural areas are unlimited and the scope to work are endless. “By adopting one village at a time and working with the government and NGOs, NRIs can make a difference,” he said. Dr. Kathula referred to some of the programs in place in several rural villages, including supply of Cloth mask, clean drinking water and free health care screening that has benefitted thousands of people Across India.

Dr. Ravi Kolli, President-Elect of AAPI, said, “While India has made substantial progress in health care as evidenced  by the fact that life expectancy in India at birth now is 71 years as opposed to 58 years in 1990 and 41 years in 1960, there are significant gaps and divergence in health metrics in different regions in India. India, thus needs to redouble and continue its efforts and dedicate resources to tackle these perennial challenges. The post graduate training of physicians specializing in Family Medicine in every teaching institution will create a motivated and well trained family physicians to address these deficits and deliver accessible, affordable, economical and continuous preventive and primary care to rural as well urban poor populations to raise health outcomes substantially all across India,” he said.

“An individual can make a tremendous difference in the lives of many in India by adopting a village,” said Dr. Jagan Ailinani, who was instrumental in founding this noble program and set an example by adopting his own birth village in the state of Telangana in India. “A majority of the NRI’s hail from villages and would like to do their part to bring progress to villages in our state and country.”

Dr. Ram Singh said: “NRIs can adopt the village they hail from originally and make a significant contribution towards its development. There is a real will and desire on the part of governments, both at the state and the center to work with NRIs and NGOs to bring development to rural India.”

Dr. Kusum Punjabi, Chair of AAPI BOT said, “Many of these projects and programs need regular funding, and management of resources. We are grateful to dozens of AAPI members who have committed to Adopting a village in India with an ongoing commitment for investment.”

Ambassador Taranjit Singh, in his message to AAPI members, said, “As India is entering 75th year of independence, honoring men and women, who fought for the freedom, we rededicate ourselves to build an India where the dreams and aspirations of India’s 13 billion people are realized.” He urged the Diaspora community to come forward to honor INDIA by joining in the year-long celebrations.

Dr. Jayesh Shah, past President of AAPI, introduced Consul General of India in Houston, Aseem Mahajan. In his address on “Indo-US Relationship In Healthcare -Rural Health Perspective” Ambassador Mahajan told the AAPI members: “You are true the heroes and partners with us, and you make us proud, especially during the critically vital Covid times.” Urging the Diaspora to contribute towards strengthening of India’s partnership with the US, Mr. Mahajan focused on India-US partnership on various health related issues, while stressing the many healthcare initiatives by the Government of India. “AAPI can play a big role in rural health, which has been a priority for the Government of India,” he said. He thanked and appreciated the many Doctors, who are already doing similar noble initiatives, helping the rural communities have access to clean drinking water. “We can work together, collaborating and sharing of knowledge and expertise, including Medical Education,” he told AAPI.

Dr.  Suresh Reddy, past President of AAPI and currently an elected Trustee of Oakbrook Village in Illinois, after introducing the Consul General of India in Chicago, Amit Kumar, announced that he is adopting his native village in the state of Telengana. In his address, Mr. Kumar spoke about “Rural Health In India, The Current Situation,” and focused on technological areas in healthcare development in the rural parts of India. “Your activities and the message to spread awareness on Covid and for providing PPEs to India are highly appreciated,” he told AAPI members, pointing to the fact that India has vaccinated over 600 million people and he hoped that India will offer vaccines to majority of India’s vast population soon.

Introduced by Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, immediate past President of India, Consul General of India in Atlanta Dr. Swati Kulkarni focused on “How AAPI and Doctors can Help India.” She said, “It’s important and laudable that you have undertaken to help India during the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence. Dr. Kulkarni shared her views on how AAPI and the government of India can collaborate in: Diplomacy for development, where “India needs overseas expertise, and you are best suited to offer,” she said, while calling upon Indian American Doctors to be part of India’s efforts to enhance the GDP. “India’s healthcare industry is growing rapidly there is more scope for growth with expanded pharma industry and medical tourism. She stressed the need for AAPI’s role in enhancing India-US political partnership, where AAPI is “a major stake holder,” she said.

Dr. Mukesh Nigam introduced Consul General of India in New York, Randhir Jaiswal. In his address on “Rural Health in India: The Challenges and Solutions” Ambassador Jaiswal said, “This noble initiative by AAPI has become more meaningful especially during the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence.” Reminding AAPI members of Modi’s call to rebuild a new India, he said, “AAPI’s initiative is even more meaningful and fits well into PM’s vision for India.” He said, ‘We applaud and thank AAPI for coming forward to help India, especially during the covid pandemic.”

Dr. Sujeeth Punnam, a renowned cardiologist introduced Deputy Consul General of India in San Francisco, Rajesh Naik. While speaking on “Rural Health, What India can learn from Developed Nations” Mr. Naik said, “AAPI has provided tremendous support as India and Indian community were struggling with the challenges of Covid. You rose to the occasion and came forward to help and support, which have been highly appreciated by the Diaspora.” During the 2nd Covid surge, AAPI stepped forward and have sent out Millions of Dollars of medical supplies to Indi, he said. While pointing to the many challenges of healthcare in rural India, Mr. Naik urged how AAPI could offer tele medical consultation in rural India, especially focusing on the preventive aspect of health in India. .

Dr. Anjana Samadder, Vice President of AAPI, said, “By adopting one village at a time and working with the government and NGOs, NRIs can make a huge difference in the lives of millions of people in India. Each project will involve a tripartite partnership between the NRI, state government and a local NGO.”

Dr. Krishan Kumar, Treasurer of AAPI pointed out, “The cost for adopting a village depends on various factors, including the population of the villages, the services that are required and what one is willing to commit to for the welfare and progress of the village one is committing to adopt.”

Dr. Lokesh Edara, chair for AAPI’s global initiative, while focusing on International medicine and how India is lagging behind in medical care, while urging the Government of India, pointed to how India needs to focus on Post Graduate Medical professionals rather than having Doctors with under graduate degree alone.

Dr. Gokula Murthy spoke about “Adopt-A-Village” by Global tele-clinics and shared with the audience as to how his firm has strived on ‘Blending medicine and technology,” while pointing to the “great opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of tele-health through awareness, education and sustainable development in all villages.”

There is no instant solution for rural India’s myriad problems. But by adopting one village at a time and working with the government and NGOs, NRIs can make a difference. Over time, an improved village could lead to an improved region, state and country.

Physicians of Indian origin are well known around the world for their compassion, passion for patient care, medical skills, research, and leadership. They have excelled in their fields of medicine, and thus have earned a name for themselves through hard work, commitment and dedication to their profession and the people they are committed to serve. Not satisfied with their own professional growth and the service they provide to their patients around the world, they are in the forefront, sharing their knowledge and expertise with others, especially those physicians and leaders in the medical field from India.

Dr. Gotimukula, urged “AAPI members to consider joining this movement and adopt a village. May be your own village of origin. AAPI will work with you in coordinating the efforts and through the support system we have in several states, will help you achieve this goal of giving back to our motherland.” AAPI members/families can sponsor a Village by emailing to: [email protected] and [email protected].  For more details, please do visit: www. aapiusa.org

Many US cities have made it mandatory for citizens to show their Covid-19 vaccination proof for indoor activities in a renewed effort to curb the further spread of the disease, according to authorities.

In New York City, the ‘Key to NYC Pass’ mandate began on Monday, which requires diners to show proof of at least one vaccination dose in order to dine indoors at restaurants, reports Xinhua news agency.

New York City was amongst the first in the US to announce that public indoor venues, such as restaurants, bars, gyms and performance and entertainment facilities, would require proof of vaccination.

Full enforcement however, won’t kick in until September 13, while San Francisco and New Orleans have since followed suit. “The move comes as the Delta variant continues to spread throughout the country, and the battered hospitality industry figures out a way to recover from a year of shutdowns and countless regulatory changes,” catering website ny.eater.com said on Monday.

As for New York State, governor Kathy Hochul said on Sunday that she was not ruling out the possibility of mandating a vaccine for indoor activities amid a surge in Covid-19 cases brought about by the Delta variant. “I’m open to all options,” she told CNN. “I’ll be looking at the possibility of mandates, but not saying they’re in or out until I know all the facts.”

She also clarified her support of mask mandates for children in school as a necessary safety step for helping New York get through a new wave of Covid-19 infections.

A lagging vaccination campaign and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant are driving a surge in Covid-19 hospitalisations in the US, reported The New York Times on Monday.

The trend is particularly notable among children and younger adults. From August 5 to 11, 263 children were admitted to hospitals every day on average, compared to 217 in early January, the last peak.

Average daily admissions rose to a record among 18- to 49-year-olds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Meanwhile, the country has administered 356,433,665 doses of Covid-19 vaccines till date and distributed 415,957,645 doses, said the CDC, adding that 198,088,722 people have received at least one dose while 168,362,058 people are fully vaccinated. (IANS)

The U.S. is now in the midst of another COVID-19 surge driven by the delta coronavirus variant and those who refuse to take the vaccine. And Dr. Anthony Fauci says, the situation will get worse before it gets better—but he doesn’t expect to see new lockdowns.

“I don’t think we’re going to see lockdowns. I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country, not enough to crush the outbreak, but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter,” Dr. Fauci said on a new episode of ABC’s This Week, referring to the massive post-holiday surge. “But things are going to get worse. If you look at the acceleration of the number of cases, the seven-day average has gone up substantially.”

Indeed, as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases in a day increased by 64% since last week (from an average of 40,597 cases in a day to 66,606). And while just over 60% of adults are fully vaccinated so far, that leaves many people—including children under the age of 12—who aren’t yet vaccinated.

The most vulnerable are those who are still unvaccinated, said Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief medical advisor on COVID-19. And the fact that there are so many people in the country who aren’t vaccinated is prolonging the pandemic.

“From the standpoint of illness, hospitalization, suffering, and death, the unvaccinated are much more vulnerable because the vaccinated are protected from severe illness for the most part,” he explained. “But when you look at the country as a whole in getting us back to normal, the unvaccinated by not being vaccinated are allowing the propagation and the spread of the outbreak, which ultimately impacts everyone.”

With so many unvaccinated people getting infected, the virus is allowed to continue to spread. That impacts other people “from the standpoint of having to wear masks, from the standpoint of the safety of the kids in school, from the standpoint of being able to open up everything the way we were when we were normal,” Dr. Fauci said.

Just last week the CDC adjusted its guidelines to recommend that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in areas of the country with a substantial or high amount of coronavirus transmission. That’s due in large part to new research suggesting that fully vaccinated people who develop a rare breakthrough infection can spread the virus and, therefore, should wear a mask to prevent that from happening. Although the decision to get vaccinated may seem like something that only impacts you, “the fact is if you get infected, even if you are without symptoms, you very well may infect another person who may be vulnerable, who may get seriously ill,” Dr. Fauci said. “So in essence, you are encroaching on their individual rights because you’re making them vulnerable.”

The way out of this surge, ultimately, is to continue using the public health tools we are very familiar with now—starting with getting vaccinated. Wearing a mask (particularly indoors in areas of the country with a lot of COVID-19 spread) as well as avoiding crowds and washing your hands frequently can all help reduce the chances that you’ll be infected with the virus and that you’ll pass it on to other people. Taking these measures now will help us get through the current delta surge and make it less likely that another concerning variant will pop up in the future.

Provides 2300 Oxygen Concentrators, 100 Ventilators And 100 High Flow Nasal Canula Machines To 45 Hospitals In India

(Chicago, IL: August 1, 2021) The deadly Corona virus has claimed millions of lives and it has placed the entire healthcare sector both in India and the United States under tremendous stress. While the Indian American medical fraternity has been at the frontlines of the fight against the pandemic, American Association of physicians of Indian origin (AAPI), the largest ethnic medical organization in the USA representing the interest of more than 100,000 physicians in the USA, has stepped up to the plate to deal with the crisis of India during its second deadly wave.

“The generosity of the members of AAPI and Indian community has been unprecedented,” says Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, President of AAPI. “I want to thank the AAPI fraternity, for not only contributing $5 Million towards Covid Relief Funds, but has spent hundreds of hours in coordinating and disbursing the vital medical supplies to the most needed hospitals across India.”

“Thanks to the overwhelming support of its members that AAPI has raised almost $5 million in the past few months,” said Dr. Kusum Punjabi, Chair of AAPI BOT, who has dedicated her services at the Emergency Department, serving thousands of Covid patients in the New Jersey.

“During my entire year of presidency, impacted by the deadly pandemic, AAPI has initiated several efforts to help our Mother India,” recalls Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalagadda, Immediate past-president of AAPI. “Aptly so, the annual Convention last month in Atlanta was a tribute to frontline healthcare professionals who have devoted their lives and work serving humanity during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.

Many parts of India continue to face the deadly second wave of COVID-19. Number of reported Covid positive cases seems to be on the rise and thousands reportedly die daily. Hospitals and medical facilities face shortage of oxygen and ICU beds, with patients lacking in adequate care.

“We have been working very diligently  in sending oxygen concentrators and ventilators to India, to deal with the calamity in India and are in the process of helping to set up oxygen generator plants in different hospitals in India,” added, Dr. Ravi Kolli, President-Elect of AAPI.

Dr. Sujeeth Punnam, AAPI’s Regionasl Director, who has been one of the many AAPI leaders who has been coordinating the efforts said, “Thus far, AAPI has provided 2300 Concentrators, 100 Ventilators and 100 High Flow Nasal Canula Machines To 45 Hospitals In India as part of the Covid Pandemic Relief Efforts.”

As some predict a 3^rd wave of the pandemic in India, AAPI has been planning and collaborating with several agencies and the government of India to help reach the much needed care and supplies to the remotest places in India.  “AAPI will continue to use the remaining funds in preparation of the impending Covid 3rd wave,” said Dr. Anjana Samadder,” Vice-President  of AAPI.

Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Secretary of AAPI said, “AAPI has been coordinating several efforts, including tele-health to patients and Doctors in India. Thanks to the overwhelming support of its members that AAPI has raised over $5 million.” “The outbreak of Covid 19 has caused significant health-related social, political and economic consequences worldwide. AAPI members have  been working very hard in sending medical equipment to India,” Dr. Krishan Kumar, Treasurer of AAPI pointed out.

“We are discussing about coordinating efforts to make available the much needed vaccines in the Slum areas in Delhi And Hyderabad where compliance is very low and apart from life saving equipment for severe Covid patients management in ICUs,” said Dr. Anil Tibrewal, who has been in the forefront leading AAPI’s efforts to help India during the Covid.

As AAPI cannot direct its resources to specific areas and relies on government of India to distribute its supplies, Dr. Amit Chakrabarty, past Secretary of AAPI and several other AAPI leaders have been working outside of the umbrella of AAPI for direct transfer of the essential material, focusing mainly on the peripheral hospitals who do not get aid readily.  HELP INDIA BREATHE is a part of ApShiNi ventures’ endeavor by a group of Doctors in helping individuals to donate Oxygen related supplies to India during this unprecedented calamity.

“The past year, while posing major challenges have also provided opportunities for AAPI to continue to work together in helping realize the mission of AAPI,” said Dr. Gotimukula. “We are proud that several Indian American physicians are recognized globally for their contributions to combat the deadly pandemic. We will continue our efforts and give our best to our Motherland in her fight against the deadly pandemic.” For more information on AAPI, please visit: www.aapiusa.org

“As we the 75^thIndependence Day of India, the nation which has made us to be what we are today, American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI,) the largest ethnic organization in the United States, representing nearly 100,000 physicians and Fellows of Indian origin in the United States, is excited to launch a unique and noble initiative in collaboration with Bitcare, ‘AAPI Blood Donation and Stem Cell Drive” from August 15th onwards in 75 cities,” Dr. AnupamaGotimukula, President of AAPI announced here today.

A major initiative of Dr. Gotimukula-led new Executive Team which assumed charge of AAPI on July 4^th during the AAPI Convention in  Atlanta, the Blood Donation campaign and free Antibody testing, is in response to the national need for blood, especially as the Covid Pandemic ravages the world.   “I want to thank the dozens of AAPI Chapters and in cities and towns across the United States, who have confirmed and have started planning to organize the event in several states,” said MeherMedavram, Chair of AAPI’s Blood Donation Initiative said. The launch event will be held in Chicago on August 7^th, Dr. Medavaram announced.

Dr. Kusum Punjabi the Chair of Board of Trustees of AAPI, who is the youngest to date to be holding this position in AAPI’s 40 years long history and serving patients in the Emergency Department, said “As the pandemic has exhausted all the resources, especially the lifesaving and much needed Blood across the nation and the world, AAPI is in the forefront, once again, spreading the message for the need to donate blood and save lives.”

Dr. Ravi Kolli, President-Elect of AAPI, a Board Certified Psychiatrist with additional qualifications in Addiction, Geriatric and Forensic Psychiatry, and serving as the Psychiatric Medical Director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Human Services, urged “potential blood donors to donate blood to help ensure lifesaving blood products are available for patients. Your donation is needed now to prevent delays in patient care. Help overcome the severe blood shortage!”

Dr. Anjana  Samadder, Vice President of AAPI, said, who herself has experienced the ordeal with Covid -19, and has come out stronger,  resilient and tenacious, quoting Red Cross said, “Every two seconds someone in the U.S. needs blood. It is essential for surgeries, cancer treatment, chronic illnesses, and traumatic injuries. Whether a patient receives whole blood, red cells, platelets or plasma, this lifesaving care starts with one person making a generous donation.”

“With the ongoing pandemic, the United States and the world need the help of blood and platelet donors and blood drive hosts to meet the needs of patient care,” said Dr. SatheeshKathula, Secretary of AAPI, a board certified hematologist and oncologist from Dayton, Ohio, practicing Medicine for nearly two decades. Dr. Kathula also said, “It is very difficult to find a matched stem cell donor for Southeast Asians should they need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant and this drive will help increase the number of potential donors.”

Dr. Krishan Kumar, a pediatric emergency medicine physician in East Meadow, New York and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, quoting studies done on the need and usefulness of Blood said, “Blood donation helps save lives. In fact, every two seconds of every day, someone needs blood. Since blood cannot be manufactured outside the body and has a limited shelf life, the supply must constantly be replenished by generous blood donors.” The growing influence of physicians of Indian heritage is evident, as increasingly physicians of Indian origin hold critical positions in the healthcare, academic, research and administrative positions across the nation. We the physicians of Indian origin are proud of our great achievements and contributions to our motherland, India, our adopted land, the US and in a very significant way to the transformation of the Indo-US relations.

Serving 1 in every 7 patients in the US, AAPI members care for millions of patients every day, while several of them have risen to hold high flying jobs, shaping the policies and programs and inventions that shape the landscape of healthcare in the US and around the  world. “As we all know our blood banks are deprived of products and another wave of COVID is rapidly increasing,” Pointed out Dr. Gotimukula, who has vowed to make AAPI a premium  healthcare leader, primarily focusing to improve and reform the current healthcare system and help towards making a better healthcare model for the patients.

“It’s a humble and a noble initiative by AAPI to help save lives. Please let us know if you are interested to take the lead in your town and help in AAPI’s blood donation drive. Thank you and truly appreciate your support in helping our blood banks.”  For more details to organize Blood Donation Drive in your city/town/region, please contact: VijayaKodali, AAPI Office Manager at: [email protected]. For more details on AAPI, please visit: www.aapiusa,org

As Covid-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue to increase among the unvaccinated across the US, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said that the country is “going in the wrong direction”, the media reported.
“If you look at the inflection of the curve of new cases, that it is among the unvaccinated. And since we have 50 per cent of the country is not fully vaccinated, that’s a problem,” Fauci was quoted as saying to CNN on Sunday. The majority of deaths could be, thus, among the unvaccinated, Fauci said.

“So it really is, as (Rochelle) Walensky (Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has said many times and I have said, it is really a pandemic among the unvaccinated, so this is an issue predominantly among the unvaccinated, which is the reason why we’re out there, practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated,” said the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.

The warning from Fauci comes as the dangerous Delta variant of Covid-19, which has spread to 124 countries, is now sweeping across the US. Health officials are urging Americans to get vaccinated to help curb its spread.

Every state in the US reported more Covid-19 cases in the week ending on July 23 than the week prior, data from the Johns Hopkins University revealed. Thirty states have yet to fully vaccinate at least half of their residents, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

And as of July 23, the daily average of people becoming fully vaccinated was the lowest it had been since the end of January, the report said. Meanwhile, the CDC is also weighing the option of revising its Covid-19 guidelines to recommend that even fully vaccinated people wear masks in public, Fauci said.

He noted that some local areas where infection rates are surging are already urging individuals to wear masks in public regardless of their vaccination status.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 34,443,064 and 610,891, respectively, according to the latest update on Monday by Johns Hopkins University. Health experts have blamed the recent surges on the low vaccination rates and the accelerating Delta variant transmission.

Few places are considering renewals of the policy, but experts suggest it’s wise for everyone—including the vaccinated—to wear masks in public indoor spaces. Despite the predictions of an early fall surge, infections from the Delta variant have soared throughout the country and spread faster than health experts anticipated. In the past few weeks, every state except Vermont has seen a sudden steep climb in cases.

In response to the surge, Los Angeles County has led the way in reinstating a mask requirement for indoor spaces, even for vaccinated people, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that unvaccinated students—which includes all those under the age of 12 — wear a mask in school. On the state level, the California Department of Public Health has not changed its current guidance, which doesn’t require masks for vaccinated people, and a representative did not indicate whether an update was likely. So for now it’s unclear how many communities may follow L.A.’s example, even as local surges appear around the country.

“We’re seeing it pretty much hit everywhere all at once, which was a bit unexpected,” says Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University in Ohio. She expected cases to emerge in the South, where people spend more time in air conditioning during the hot months, before moving northward. “That’s the tricky thing about exponential growth,” says Dominique Heinke, a postdoctoral epidemiologist in North Carolina. “It looks like a whole lot of nothing, and then out of nowhere, seemingly it just skyrockets, and getting it under control is going to be that much harder.”

This is especially true as states pour their energies into vaccination outreach while leaving mask mandates behind. Many public health experts believe the CDC jumped the gun in loosening its mask recommendations. The nation’s largest nurses union sent a letter on July 12 to CDC director Rochelle Walensky asking the agency to reinstate the recommendation for everyone to wear masks in public or when physically near people outside their household. During a recent webinar for health journalists, Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine and director of Scripps Research Institute, and Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, both said they thought the relaxed guidance was premature.

Smith agrees. “I think the CDC rescinded that too early,” she says. The evidence base conclusively shows that masks substantially reduce the risk of transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to others and reduce the risk of contracting it.

Mask fatigue

“There is a real COVID fatigue, so it’s harder to sell [mask-wearing] today than it was a year ago,” says George Turabelidze, the state epidemiologist for Missouri, which in June became the first state to see a surge hit. He says Missouri, which has never had a statewide mask requirement during the pandemic, is unlikely to issue one because the governor supports decision-making at the local level. Missouri’s cases continue to rise, particularly in rural areas, with a 20 percent increase from last week to this week. “We do not anticipate any improvement anytime soon,” Turabelidze says, adding that it’s hard to justify mandates for everyone.

“There is no scientific evidence proving that someone who is vaccinated and infected could transmit the infection to others,” he says. He explains that there have been indications suggesting it’s possible for vaccinated people to infect others, but no studies so far have clearly shown it’s happening. Without clear evidence that vaccinated people who develop a breakthrough infection can transmit the virus to others, he believes the science doesn’t justify requiring vaccinated people to wear masks. “But because nobody can rule it out, [transmission from vaccinated people] is still possible, probably at much lower level.”

He suspects that such a possibility is L.A. County’s rationale, but it may not be enough for other cities or regions. Still, he says it’s wise for vaccinated people to mask up when around higher-risk people, such as those who are immune-compromised or have underlying medical conditions. Turabelidze and his colleagues have been working hard to counter disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to increase vaccination rates. Missouri had been lagging most of the country in vaccination rates, but recently surpassed 40 percent of all vaccine-eligible people.

Experts encourage masking, but states won’t require it

In some states, counties can’t require masking, even if they want to. For example, eight states so far have made it illegal to require masks in school, even in lower grades where students are too young to be vaccinated—and even though the CDC has advised all unvaccinated students to wear masks. One of those states is Arkansas, which currently has the second highest cases per 100,000 people in the U.S.

While recent Arkansas legislation prohibits requiring masks in any government spaces, “we are still recommending and strongly encouraging it for people who are not vaccinated, and many people who are fully vaccinated are choosing to wear masks,” says Jennifer Dillaha, the Arkansas state epidemiologist and medical director for Immunizations and Outbreak Response at the Arkansas Department of Health.

Arkansas is making a big push for vaccinations, but it’s difficult in such a rural state. Pharmacies are the only vaccine sites in most communities, but the state will soon offer vaccines at Dollar General stores. One barrier is that many people still don’t know where to get vaccinated, and many lack internet access, so the state is advertising the number 1-800-985-6030 for finding a site. “We’re strongly encouraging people to get vaccinated now, because with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it takes five to six weeks to become fully protected, and they need both doses to be well protected from the Delta variant,” she says.

In Florida, another state seeing a rapid rise in cases, Governor Ron DeSantis is not considering any mask mandates or lockdowns, according to Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary. She says DeSantis predicted a rise in summer cases for months, but he “emphasized that we are in a much better place than we were last summer, with a high rate of immunization among the most vulnerable population—senior citizens—which is reflected in lower hospitalization rates compared to last summer,” Pushaw says.

Instead, the state is focused on increasing immunizations through the state’s online vaccine locator and multiple synchronized messaging campaigns in several languages with statewide billboards and radio, digital, social media, and streaming media, according to WeesamKhoury, the communications director for the Florida Department of Health.

The Delta variant 

The higher transmissibility of Delta and its ability to evade some antibody protection means more opportunities for breakthrough infections, Heinke says. “If you’ve got this variant sending out so many more viral particles, proper mask wearing becomes more important,” she says. While breakthrough cases are rare, they do happen, Smith says, which is particularly concerning for those worried about potentially transmitting the disease to unvaccinated family members.

“I think it’s wise for many of us to continue to mask for those just-in-case scenarios, especially with unknowns about vaccine effectiveness with the Delta variant and others that may emerge,” she says. “At least until everyone in the population has had a chance to get vaccinated, which includes children who aren’t even eligible for the vaccines yet.” Although she doesn’t expect many places to implement mask mandates, she says it’s important to call for them, if only for the historical record. “We need to know some of the places where we erred, and I think this is going to be one of them,” Smith says. “Masks are such a simple intervention that not using them more definitively to protect individuals has been a misstep.”

Mixed mask messaging

As an epidemiologist, Heinke would like to see more places require indoor masking. “I think we’ve let our guard down too quickly,” she says. The CDC’s guidance was that vaccinated people can remove masks indoors. “But with no way to verify that, it pretty much gave permission for everyone to take off their masks indoors, so that means you have a good number of unvaccinated people unmasked in these spaces where SARS-CoV-2 spreads incredibly efficiently.”

The uninsurance rate may be declining and the American Rescue Plan Act’s changes may be partially responsible for this shift, according to a Commonwealth Fund report. The report pulls its data from a survey conducted by SSRS. The researchers interviewed over 5,400 adults in a primarily online survey from March 9 through June 8, 2021.

In the first half of 2021, approximately one in every ten American adults was uninsured. Populations between the ages of 19 and 34, populations with incomes that were less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, and Latinx or Hispanic communities had the highest shares of uninsurance—13, 16, and 20 percent respectively. The researchers noted that this uninsurance rate for the first half of 2021 is lower than the uninsurance rate for 2020. According to the Commonwealth Fund’s Biennial Health Insurance Survey released in August 2020, the adult uninsurance rate for the first half of 2020 was 12.5 percent. Additionally, two out of every five adults had unstable healthcare coverage.

The report outlined four possible reasons that the uninsurance rate would drop. First, it is possible that pandemic-related coverage losses were not pervasive.  Previous studies have demonstrated that coronavirus-related job loss was largely concentrated among low-income individuals, who were less likely to receive healthcare coverage through their employer.  Additionally, many employees were furloughed, instead of losing their jobs altogether. Of those who were furloughed, a previous survey indicated that 53 percent continued to receive employer-sponsored health plan benefits.

The Commonwealth Fund survey found that 54 percent of adults who lost their healthcare coverage experienced a coverage gap of only three months or less. Those who did lose their employer-sponsored healthcare coverage might have found healthcare coverage elsewhere. This is particularly possible in light of the second and third possible motivators for this shift in uninsurance. The second potential cause is that the Biden administration—along with many states that have state-based exchanges—initiated an Affordable Care Act marketplace special enrollment period.

When it started in mid-February 2021, the enrollment period was supposed to last for a couple of months but the Biden administration soon extended it to August 15, 2021. The current administration has also promoted the Affordable Care Act marketplace health plans much more broadly than the previous administration. Third, increased subsidies for the Affordable Care Act marketplace along with COBRA subsidies may have bolstered interest in marketplace plans, drawing greater enrollment and improving coverage rates.

Temporary advance payments of premium tax credits have substantially lowered costs for some enrollees on the Affordable Care Act marketplace since the American Rescue Plan Act was passed in March 2021. Some enrollees can access health plans with premiums of $10 per month or less if they are eligible for tax credits. Individuals whose incomes are at over 400 percent of the federal poverty level can also receive subsidies. And those who lost their healthcare coverage due to the pandemic may have their COBRA premiums fully covered. Finally, the Medicaid maintenance of eligibility standard that the federal government implemented due to the coronavirus pandemic may have enabled lower uninsurance. This mandate will lift with the public health emergency, however.

As a result of these rules which make healthcare coverage more affordable, enrollment in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplace has increased. In a separate study, experts from Avalere noted that the boost to enrollment on the Affordable Care Act marketplace could have unforeseen ramifications for payers.  The influx of new enrollees and potential enrollees could place a greater strain on payer customer service offerings. Additionally, the higher volume of members may have an impact on payers’ risk adjustment and medical loss ratios projections.

India’s actual death toll from covid-19 could range between 1.3 million to a staggering 5 million, with even the most conservative estimate putting its tally at more than double the U.S., the highest recorded in the world so far. The numbers, derived from research models and local authority data, range from three to 10 times the country’s official count, adding to evidence that the true cost of India’s outbreak has been massively under-reported. As corpses floated in the Ganges, a river sacred to millions of Hindus, and crematoriums and graveyards were overwhelmed, skepticism grew over the death toll of around 420,000 recorded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has used the ostensibly low mortality rate to defend India’s covid track record.

Bloomberg approached authorities in about half of India’s 28 states and territories seeking death data from April and May for the last two years and analyzed figures from researchers and experts. The result is clear: the real toll has been vastly underestimated because of a combination of under-counting, a backlog in the civil registration system and a lack of testing leading to covid deaths being classified as other conditions like heart disease. The findings dovetail with estimates from researchers around the world. Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, has devoted much of the past year to modeling India’s pandemic. Her studies suggest the death toll is around 1.3 million up to June 15.

Rukmini S, a leading data journalist, has written that the numbers she’s gathered suggest a death toll closer to 2.5 million. A report from the Washington-based Center for Global Development think tank released Tuesday, July 20, 2021, studied data from three different sources, finding that excess deaths – a term public health experts use to describe mortality from all causes during a crisis that is above what would have been expected in ‘normal’ conditions – likely ranged between 3.4 million to 4.9 million.

“Regardless of source and estimate, actual deaths during the covid pandemic are likely to have been an order of magnitude greater than the official count,” said the report, co-authored by Arvind Subramanian, former chief economic adviser to the Indian government and two other researchers. “True deaths are likely to be in the several millions, not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India’s worst human tragedy since partition and independence.”

The federal Health Ministry in a July 14 press release called media reports on higher covid death counts “speculative.” India’s Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told Parliament Tuesday that “detailed guidelines for reporting of deaths have been issued by Union Health Ministry to all states and union territories.” The ministry did not respond to written questions from Bloomberg – instead it released a statement Thursday, July 22, saying reports of higher death tolls were misleading. “Given the robust and statute based death registration system in India, while some cases could go undetected as per the principles of infectious disease and its management, missing out on the deaths is unlikely,” it said.

Despite widespread reporting on oxygen shortages across India as the second wave of infections hit the country in April and May, the minister added that “no deaths due to lack of oxygen has been specifically reported” by local governments. The states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha combined have close to 300,000 excess deaths in the six months to June, according to all-cause mortality numbers analyzed by Bloomberg – more than 5.5 times their official covid death data of about 53,000. That already represents three-quarters of India’s official toll, though they are just four among 28 states and territories and 17% of the nation’s 1.4 billion people.

State government officials say in most cases that people who had not been tested or had tested negative – but showed coronavirus symptoms – were not counted in the official toll. In rural areas, many people went untested, untreated and ultimately uncounted, contrary to federal government guidelines. At least six states did not respond to requests for all-cause death data. The figures paint a very different picture to the narrative presented by Modi, who has said that India handled the outbreak better than any other country, pointing to its low mortality rate as evidence. Modi’s popularity has fallen as the country’s health infrastructure almost collapsed: his government’s approval ratings dropped from 75% in 2019 to 51% this year, according to polling company LocalCircles’s survey released May 29. While under-reporting of covid fatalities is a global phenomenon, the problem is aggravated in India because deaths were already poorly counted before the pandemic. Only 92% of all deaths are registered and only a fifth of those are properly medically certified.

“Not capturing a death is dishonor to a life,” said Mukherjee. “Without relating the deaths and hospitalizations to vaccine and variant data, we will never be able to grasp the effectiveness of vaccines or clinical lethality of the variant.” Historically India has published ‘all-cause’ mortality data every two years, Rukmini said, but noted that she and other reporters have recently accessed this data via local sources. It is “available and should be made public. We don’t need to wait for two years.”

Across some of India’s most populous states, local reporters and non-governmental organizations have pieced together a more accurate picture of the pandemic. The eastern state of Bihar saw nearly 75,000 unexplained deaths in the first five months of 2021, most during the deadly second wave of the pandemic. That represents almost 10 times the state’s official covid death figure, the news channel NDTV reported. “In Madhya Pradesh, the state bulletin gives one figure, while the district bulletin gives an entirely different number, while crematoriums are telling a different story,” said Amulya Nidhi, the national co-convener of Jan SwasthyaAbhiyan or People’s Health Movement. His organization’s data shows that in April and May, about 14,695 people lost their lives to covid-19 in 20 of the state’s 51 districts, while the official figure is only 2,425.

From January to May this year, Andhra Pradesh excess deaths may have jumped as much as 34 times, the Hindu reported, citing civil registration data. Unaccounted deaths also have been reported from Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Even the capital New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai, where record-keeping is generally better, have large unexplained death numbers. In May and June, some states including Bihar and Maharashtra reconciled their death data, pushing the country’s cumulative mortality toll up.

Not all ‘excess deaths’ have to be covid-19 deaths, but most of them likely are because they occurred during the virus surge, said ChinmayTumbe, assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and author of the book ‘The Age of Pandemics (1817-1920): How they shaped India and the World.’ “The problem of course is that the government is going to maintain that we have a great reporting system,” Tumbe said. “I’m afraid that what the data shows is that’s clearly not true.”

Fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, Covid cases are rising in almost all the 50 states in the United States, and with less thanhalf the US population fully vaccinated, public health chiefs warned of an “extraordinary surge” coast to coast. Covid are going up, so are the number of hospitalizations and deaths.  Data compiled by the New York Times showed that the average rate measured over the past 2 weeks was rising in all 50 states – varying from a dramatic 373% in Tennessee to 10% in Maine. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases official, said there had been an extraordinary surge in the Delta variant of Covid-19 – which is more transmissible – around the world, including in the US.

Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus team, confirmed that unvaccinated Americans “account for virtually all recent Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths”. Four states that are currently seeing high increases in Covid-19 cases have accounted for over 40% of the total Covid cases seen in the country this past week, Zients said. One in five cases occurred in Florida, in which about 50% of the state is fully vaccinated. “Each Covid-19 death is tragic, and those happening now are even more tragic because they are preventable,” he said. Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are also seeing surges in infections in many parts.

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and research scientist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan has pointed to a compelling preprint study out of China recently that showed people who were exposed to the Delta variant got sick fast. The study has found that people infected with the Delta variant are shedding way more virus, which could explain why it’s so contagious. Rasmussen says the good news is that it still transmits in the same way as the original strain, so all of those mitigation tools like masking and handwashing and social distancing – all of those still work to block Delta. And the vaccines are still highly effective against this variant.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) warns that new COVID-19 cases are on a sharp rise, up 70%, fueled by the Delta variant. Officials expect more spread in the nation’s unvaccinated population. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain far below last winter’s peak and vaccines are effective against Delta. But rising cases prompted the official, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to declare in a briefing on July 16^th that the trend is clear. Unvaccinated people are at risk. She pleaded with Americans to get fully vaccinated.

Describing the new trend across the nation, Walensky says it’s a little bit of a mixed picture. Cases are rising in some places like California and New York that have pretty good vaccination rates. But she says by far, the most spread is happening in places where not many people are vaccinated. In fact, 97% of people who get so sick with COVID-19 that they have to be hospitalized are unvaccinated. Officials are concerned by these numbers and point out that sickness and death is avoidable. COVID-19 is now a vaccine-preventable disease, and people who’ve been holding out should get vaccinated.

During the press briefing, Walensky said that in places that are hot spots where there’s low vaccination rates, it may make sense for local officials to consider masking requirements until the vaccine campaign can catch up. The Los Angelus County has mandated indoor masking, including vaccinated people, and  so we’ll have to see if other places follow suit. “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk. Communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well,” she said.

Most areas of the country are seeing a new surge in COVID-19 cases as variants of the virus serve as a painful reminder that the pandemic is not over despite eased restrictions. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have documented an increase in average daily cases over the past two weeks. But nine in particular, including seven in the South, have seen cases at least double in that time period, according to data from The New York Times.

The seven-day-average of new cases was 13,859 as of July 6, up 21% compared to two weeks earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Cases attributed to the most recent days might rise further because of a reporting lag following the July 4 holiday weekend. The spike comes as the Delta variant, which is more transmissible than any previous strain, accounted for around 52% of cases in the two weeks ending July 3, according to the CDC. Despite having among the highest availability of vaccines of any country, America’s immunization campaign has dropped off steeply since April. President Joe Biden narrowly missed his goal of having 70% adults at least partly vaccinated by Independence Day, with the current figure at 67%. Regions in the Midwest and South with lower vaccination rates are experiencing higher case rates than regions with high vaccination rates such as the Northeast, a trend that has become increasingly clear in recent weeks.

A hospital in Springfield, Missouri, ran out of ventilators to treat hospitalized COVID patients over the weekend, local media reported. The city of 160,000’s two hospitals were treating 213 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, up from 168 on Friday and 31 on May 24, the Kansas City Star said. “The trajectory that we’re likely to see is two different flavours of the pandemic in the United States, one in which it’s more of a problem in places where there’s a high level of unvaccinated individuals,” Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told AFP.

“In other parts of the country, the pandemic is largely going to be something that’s managed as more of an ordinary respiratory virus,” he added. Mr. Adalja said that even with Delta becoming the dominant strain he envisioned a “decoupling” of hospitalisations and deaths from rising cases in highly vaccinated regions, as has been seen in Israel. “Increasingly, I think we have to start to shift our focus away from cases and really look at hospitalizations, because that’s what the vaccine was designed to do — it was designed to decouple cases from hospitalization,” he said.

Real world data has shown that the Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines have retained high efficacy against severe COVID and the same is almost certainly true of the Moderna vaccine, according to experts. Most areas of the country are seeing a new surge in COVID-19 cases as variants of the virus serve as a painful reminder that the pandemic is not over despite eased restrictions. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have documented an increase in average daily cases over the past two weeks. But nine in particular, including seven in the South, have seen cases at least double in that time period, according to data from The New York Times.

In Los Angeles County, officials recorded more than 1,000 new cases for three consecutive days this week for the first time since March. Arkansas also reported more than 1,000 new cases for a third straight day Friday. “The majority of states have large swaths of population that are still not protected,” said Amber D’Souza, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She said that despite tremendous progress on vaccinations, the new data show the outbreaks are mostly hitting areas with lower vaccination rates. Those spikes are due in part to the spread of the more transmissible delta variant and loosened COVID-19 restrictions, D’Souza said.

“We expect to see continuing surges of infection until we are able to bring vaccination rates higher than they currently are,” she added. Overall, the U.S. is now averaging more than 19,000 new cases for the first time since the end of May, marking a 60 percent increase compared with two weeks ago. A third of those cases were documented in five states — Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada — CNN medical analyst Jonathan Reiner told the network Monday.

Throughout the pandemic, rises in coronavirus cases have typically preceded spikes in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. While the rate of COVID-19 deaths is still decreasing in the U.S., data from the Times shows an 11 percent increase in average daily hospitalizations over the past two weeks. During that same period, vaccination rates have plummeted to an average of 500,000 a day, the lowest level since President Biden took office.

Months after Biden declared vaccines were available to all Americans 18 and over, 58.9 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, as are 48 percent of all Americans, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vaccination rates of the five states with the highest daily average of new coronavirus cases — Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana and Nevada — are all below the national percentages. D’Souza said government officials need to focus on localized data “because within a state often there really are different stories happening with vaccination and therefore with infection.” And even with the recent surge, she said the nationwide case count is not expected to reach 2020 levels, in large part because 79 percent of those 65 and older have been fully vaccinated.

“There are a lot of reasons for hope,” she said. “That being said, things have stalled this past month. We are seeing reduced vaccination and increased infection, and that is the worry of what that forebodes for the fall.” Experts have said that unvaccinated people are more at risk to develop serious illness and die from the delta variant that now makes up a majority of cases in the U.S. Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said last week that more than 99 percent of people who died of COVID-19 in June in the U.S. were not vaccinated.

Several polls have shown that Republicans are less likely to get vaccinated than Democrats. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that the vaccination gap between counties that voted for former President Trump in 2020 and those that voted for Biden has nearly doubled in two months. Efforts to narrow that gap face stiff competition from some vaccine opponents.“The government was hoping that they could sort of sucker 90 percent of the population into getting vaccinated. And it isn’t happening,” said conservative author Alex Berenson, drawing applause at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas.

Some officials are now weighing whether to take action to combat COVID-19 case surges. Los Angeles County and St. Louis County are recommending all people wear masks indoors, even if they are vaccinated. In Mississippi, the state’s Department of Health called on residents aged 65 and older and those with chronic medical conditions to avoid all indoor mass gatherings. On Sunday, Fauci told CNN’s “State of the Union” that there should be more local mandates to prevent COVID-19 spread, calling it a “life and death situation.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing Monday that the federal government will “certainly support” local leaders if they decide to institute restrictions “to keep their community safe.”Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told ABC’s “This Week” that he plans to travel to six cities in his state this week in an effort to combat vaccine hesitancy. “We’ve got to overcome that mistrust because it — Republicans, Democrats, we all suffer the same consequence if the delta variant hits us and we’re not vaccinated,” Hutchinson said.

President Joe Biden has appointed an Indian-American health policy expert who served on the leadership of the Biden-Harris transition Health and Human Services (HHS) agency review team. Dr. Meena Seshamani, 43, will be acting as Deputy Administrator and the Director of the US Centre for Medicare. She will lead the Centre’s efforts in serving the people 65 or older, people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease that rely on Medicare coverage.

She received her B.A. with Honours in Business Economics from Brown University, her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and her Ph.D. in Health Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She completed her residency training in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and practiced as a head and neck surgeon at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco.

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, an administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said, “Dr. Meena Seshamani brings her diverse background as a health care executive, health economist, physician and health policy expert to CMS.” Dr. Seshamani also brings decades of policy experience to her role, including recently serving on the leadership of the Biden-Harris transition HHS agency review team.

Brooks-LaSure added, “Providing quality health care to the people who rely on Medicare and advancing health equity as we do it is a priority for CMS. I am delighted to say Dr. Seshamani will bring her unique perspective on how health policy impacts the real lives of patients to her leadership role as Deputy Administrator and Director of the Centre for Medicare,” she said.

Seshamani most recently served as Vice President of Clinical Care Transformation at MedStar Health, where she conceptualized, designed, and implemented population health and value-based care initiatives and served on the senior leadership of the 10 hospital, 300+ outpatient care site health system, a media release said. The care models and service lines under her leadership, including community health, geriatrics, and palliative care, have been nationally recognized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and others.

Prior to MedStar Health, she was director of the office of Health Reform at the US Department of Health and Human Services, where she drove strategy and led implementation of the Affordable Care Act across the department, including coverage policy, delivery system reform, and public health policy, the statement said.