HealthCap CEO Peter Feeney and AHCA President & CEO Mark Parkinson talk about the future of COVID, vaccines and variants, and what the senior living community might expect regarding census in the future.
Herd Immunity
Herd immunity is the point where there’s enough people that have been either infected or vaccinated that you basically can’t sustain transmission in the community and if one case leads to less than one new infection, then eventually it can’t be sustained. Estimates vary on how much of the population needs to have immunity to reach that goal. Dr. Anthony …
Vaccine Hesitancy
Each of us is a unique individual with unique beliefs and needs. In this age of uncertainty, many people have listened to the experts, read the reports, looked at the numbers, and at the end of the day have decided not to be vaccinated against COVID-19. This is individual choice, right or wrong; we as Americans make choices to fit …
Vaccinate Dialysis Patients
The Biden Administration is announcing a new partnership with dialysis clinics to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to people receiving dialysis and health care personnel in outpatient dialysis clinics. Kidney disease disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities as 34% of patients on dialysis are Black and 19% are Hispanic. People on dialysis who contract COVID-19 often have severe health outcomes and have …
Everyone Vaccinated by the End of May
Vaccine distribution nationwide continues to ramp up, with nearly 2-million shots being given daily. President Biden has now said that every adult could be vaccinated by the end of May. A big promise that brings with it hope, a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. That said, the question remains; when will COVID vaccination be as simple as …
Fauci – Two-Shot Strategy
There has been a lot of debate over which vaccine is most effective, has fewer side effects, if you can mix the two different two-dose brands, etc. But more recently there has been active debate on whether a single dose of a two-dose vaccine is as effective as the full two doses. In the Washington Post newspaper, Dr. Fauci is …
Good News!
All major indicators of COVID-19 transmission in the United States continue to fall rapidly. Weekly new cases have fallen from 1.7 million at the national peak in early January to fewer than 600,000 the week of February 18, 2021, and cases have declined in every state. As we’ve seen at many points in the pandemic, case numbers are changing most …
Second COVID Vaccine Reactions
Immunologists and infectious disease experts say it is not unexpected that second-dose reactions to the Pfizer and/or Moderna vaccine are more intense than the first. “The first time the immune system comes into contact with something, it is getting primed” said Purvi Parikh, MD, an immunologist at NYI Langone Health in New York City. “That goes for everything, from vaccines …
Another Plus to Vaccinate
In a study published in Nature Medicine, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, the first vaccine approved in the United States for use against COVID-19, neutralized three variants of the virus, including the B.1.1.7 strain first identified in the United Kingdom, and two new variants first confirmed in South Africa. University of Texas Medical Branch researchers engineered three COVID-19 viruses with the spike …
Heart Disease Vaccine Prioritization
The CDC’s phased approach to vaccine distribution puts all patients ages 16 to 64 with medical conditions that increase the risk for severe COVID-19 infection in the 1c category, citing heart conditions, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity among examples. However, the CDC made no attempt to stratify by levels of risk among those conditions. “A coherent vaccine allocation policy promoting the …