US to offer free at-home Covid tests by mail amid a coronavirus surge: Latest

Government and private health insurance plans, including Medicare, are required to cover Pfizer and Moderna updated boosters for free.

But some people are reporting difficulties getting insurance to pay for their shot, per reporting from CNBC.

Some have complained on social media, explaining they were charged up to $190 for the vaccine, which reduces the chances of getting severely ill or dying from Covid-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave Northeastern University $17.5 billion to open an infectious disease prevention centre.

Alessandro Vespignani, director of the school’s Network Science Institute, said in a press release that when Covid-19 hit “everybody was caught off guard. We don’t want to be in a situation like that in the future.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) countered false claims that Covid-19 vaccines affect fertility in a recent Instagram post.

The post shows a graphic of a woman asking, “Is it safe for me to get a COVID-19 vaccine if I would like to have a baby one day?”

The caption answers, “Yes. People who are trying to become pregnant now or who might become pregnant in the future may receive a [Covid] vaccine. There is no evidence that fertility problems are a side effect of any vaccine, including COVID-19 vaccines.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is highlighting a campaign aimed at helping pregnant people protect themselves from Covid.

The website for the program, called Pregnant and Protected, states that Covid-19 has made pregnancy even “more challenging for moms-to-be who want to keep themselves and their developing babies safe”.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a statement warning of a potential tripledemic in the US in the coming months. This could happen if Covid-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) all peak at the same time, experts say.

To prevent this scenario, which could overwhelm hospitals and urgent care centres, experts are urging all who are eligible to get vaccinated against the three viruses.

A study from UCLA published in The New England Journal of Medicine last year found that flu vaccination rates declined in states that saw low rates of Covid-19 vaccination, suggesting that public health campaigns encouraging protection through vaccines haven’t been effective.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been providing weekly data on hospitalisations and deaths from Covid-19. Now the agency is also supplying numbers for the country’s test positivity rate and number of emergency room visits attributable to the virus.

From 10 September to 16 September, the test positivity rate in the US was 12.5 per cent, which was down 1.6 per cent from the previous week. During that same time frame, 1.9 per cent of emergency department visits were attributable to Covid-19, down 19.3 per cent from the previous week.

A photo of a sign taped to a pharmacy door in San Francisco has circulated on Twitter, with experts criticising its messaging. The sign emphasises that Covid vaccines are no longer free everywhere, and experts say this language is daunting. Dr Lucky Tran, director of science communications and media relations at Columbia University, tweeted, “This is intimidating and will only turn people who want to get vaccinated away.”

The Bridge Access Program, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), offers free updated Covid-19 vaccines to people who do not have health insurance (or those whose health insurance won’t cover the shot).

To find a pharmacy participating in the program and make an appointment, you can visit Vaccines.gov. After selecting which vaccine you’re looking for, you can filter for pharmacies that are participating in the program.

In a new interview with ABC News, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he would not fund Covid vaccines if elected president in 2024.

“Well certainly we’re not going to fund them,” DeSantis said when asked about what his Covid vaccine policy would be. “Biden’s spending billions and billions of dollars on these…studies have not demonstrated the benefit of the boosters.”

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend the updated Covid vaccinations, now available nationwide, for everyone six months and older. The vaccines help protect everyone eligible from severe disease or death from Covid-19.

In a new interview with MSNBC, Dr Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, discussed long Covid research and the Biden administration’s response to it. He said health authorities are “totally aware” that long Covid is a serious problem.

Deaths from Covid-19 rose 2.7 per cent from 10 September to 16 September compared to the previous week, per the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During that same period, the test positivity rate was 12.5 per cent, and 1.9 per cent of emergency visits were diagnosed as Covid.

Hospitalisation data for that week is not yet available.