Healthcare

The TSA has sped up technology deployments since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as it moves to reduce literal touch points at airport screening stations. The effort has been undertaken to benefit the traveling public but also TSA staffers themselves. As of Dec. 15, 11 TSA agents have died of Covid-19. The technology deployments have centered around 3-D screening systems and automated ID authentication. The former diminishes the likelihood that passenger carry-on bags will have to be manually checked, the agency said, which in turn reduces interactions between agents and flyers.

The initial rollout of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has begun, and vaccines are shipping across the U.S. Demand for COVID-19 vaccines will outpace supply for the foreseeable future. Yet experts have warned that a substantial proportion of these highly perishable vaccines could go to waste if they are not being used before they expire.

As the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine began rolling out Monday, healthcare experts warn to not allow the vaccine’s arrival to create a false sense of security especially during the holidays. Dr. Sudha Nagalingam, the Medical Director of El Rio’s HIV Infectious Disease Clinic, said Arizona’s recent spike in cases likely tracks back to Thanksgiving when people loosened restrictions and met with family and friends.

Rep. Jackie Speier joins MSNBC’s “American Voices” host Alicia Menendez to discuss the optimism behind support of the bipartisan Covid-19 relief aid proposal and what is at stake for millions of Americans come the end of the year as federal aid runs dry.

More than 68 million infected with the novel coronavirus and more than 1.5 million dead. 2020 has been a year defined by global sickness and loss. In the face of this extraordinary threat, it’s easy to forget how much we have accomplished. Doctors, nurses and staff in hospitals around the world have learned how to better care for those sick with COVID-19. Researchers have uncovered secrets of a virus that, not so long ago, was wholly unknown.

COVID-19 has transformed the landscape in which organizations and individuals operate. Within days of the first outbreak, almost every aspect of our lives changed, including how we work, attend school, shop, access healthcare, and socialize. Fortunately, digital versions of all these activities existed before the pandemic, resulting in quick adoption, and are likely to persist long after the pandemic is over.

Recent announcements by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, Moderna, and AstraZeneca on their coronavirus vaccines have been promising. With so many companies racing to develop a vaccine, there are certain to be additional announcements forthcoming, ideally with comparable or even better efficacy data, less stringent cold-chain storage requirements, and even less adverse side effects. Although there are many more hurdles to traverse, establishing the efficacy of a vaccine in less than one year is nothing short of remarkable.

Delivering a vaccine for a global pandemic that has caused nearly 1.5 million deaths and has infected more than 65 million people will require a logistical effort of extraordinary complexity. The three leading vaccine candidates, from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca/Oxford, have very different requirements when it comes to shipping and storage, and even after the vaccines arrive at their destinations—the health clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies where vaccinations will occur—there are a host of logistical hurdles that this patchwork of health care providers must overcome to ensure efficient and equitable distribution.

In developing COVID-19 policies and managing supply chains the constant drumbeat is “data-driven decisions” where the new high priests are data scientists. Data by itself is not sufficient, the missing critical success factor is “models” to project the impact of decisions. One critical area for COVID-19 public policy is understanding the impact of different group sizes on the spread of COVID-19. This blog will provide a few examples of being “COVID-19 data adrift without operations management” and illustrate that a simple model that can be coded in a few hours provides more insight than is possible with just data for the group size question.

With COVID infections surging across the U.S. and Thanksgiving celebrations expected to have given the coronavirus more opportunities to spread, experts fear the country will soon experience a record number of deaths from the disease—something equivalent to the 2,977 people killed on 9/11 per day—by Christmas. In the past week alone, 10,288 people died of COVID in the U.S., with the current death toll of 267,302, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control website that was updated Tuesday. On average in the past week, 1,469 people died of COVID each day.