The number of people seeking health care in Massachusetts dropped dramatically when the coronavirus pandemic hit – and eight months later, it still hasn't totally rebounded, according to new data from the Health Policy Commission. The data show that as of the end of September, emergency department visits in Massachusetts remained 20 percent below normal and inpatient hospital visits remained down by more than 10 percent.
AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford said their Covid-19 vaccine was as much as 90% effective in preventing infections without serious side effects in large clinical trials, boosting hopes that a third Western-developed shot could be authorized for use before the end of the year.
ST. LOUIS — State and local officials, scrambling to prepare for an overwhelming surge of COVID-19 patients, are in talks to stem the tide, including options such as building a field hospital, canceling all but the most urgent medical procedures and deploying the Missouri National Guard to relieve health care staffing shortages.
The United States Food and Drug Administration will be holding a public hearing on Dec. 10 to hear from experts with Pfizer and Moderna on the effectiveness of their COVID-19 vaccine. The hearing will be one of the last steps that is needed to be taken before the vaccines could get final approval for distribution.
The US Food and Drug Administration on Saturday issued an emergency use authorization for Regeneron's antibody cocktail to treat Covid-19 in high-risk patients with mild to moderate disease. President Donald Trump received the therapy, called REGEN-COV2, when he was hospitalized for coronavirus. The treatment has to be infused into the bloodstream and is meant to mimic an immune response to infection.
Within a month, New Hampshire hospitals’ bed capacity could be maxed out if the rate of new COVID-19 infections doesn’t recede. As the disease’s second wave hits, administrators, clinicians and public health officials said lessons learned from the first COVID-19 spike make them confident they can maintain care in all areas. But this is 2020. Things could change.