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The race to vaccinate the U.S. population against Covid-19 continues. Meg Tirrell reports on how health systems are weighing vaccine mandates for employees. And Holly Ellyatt has details on a new study from the WHO that says long working hours are leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year.
| | Vaccination rates aren't high enough – even among health-care workers | And some healthcare systems are considering mandates. Houston Methodist's CEO told CNBC it wasn't a matter of if they'd implement a requirement for employees, but when. And our reporting showed mandates work — but they can lead to backlash. And as Dr Ashish Jha points out, there are reasons some aren't getting vaccines that go beyond what a mandate can solve.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | What full FDA approval could mean for Covid vaccines | Pfizer and BioNTech have already started their application process for full U.S. approval of their Covid-19 vaccine. Rival Moderna is expected to submit for the same process for its shot later this month. Former FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf told me it sets the stage for the companies to begin marketing the shots directly to consumers – under the watchful eye of the U.S. agency. It could encourage more businesses, universities and other organizations to start requiring people to get the shots, health experts told me, an already controversial move.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | CDC chief acknowledges that Covid could have come from a lab | CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky acknowledged it was a "possibility" that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory. Most coronaviruses, however, "generally come from an animal origin," Walensky testified in the Senate on Wednesday. The remarks from the top Biden administration health official came amid growing calls to investigate whether the virus had zoonotic, or animal, origins or came from a lab in Wuhan, China.
-Richard Mendez | | | | Long working hours are killing 745,000 people a year, research finds | Long working hours are killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year, according to estimates from the WHO and the International Labour Organization. They estimated there were 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, marking a 29% increase since 2000. The study, published in the Environment International journal, was a first global analysis of the loss of life and health associated with working long hours.
-Holly Ellyatt | | | | Emergent CEO says FDA is holding over 100 million J&J vaccine doses | Emergent CEO Robert Kramer told House lawmakers this week that the FDA is holding more than 100 million Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine doses for further testing after the agency found multiple violations at a plant. The U.S. put J&J in charge of Emergent's plant in Baltimore last month after learning the federal contractor that had been making key ingredients for J&J and AstraZeneca, cross-contaminated the two shots. It's unclear if and when the doses will be released to the public. The FDA told us they are working closely with the companies.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | |
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