Tag: coronavirus

Empty hospital bed.

New Data Reignites Concerns over COVID-19 and Nursing Homes in New York State

James W. Lytle Leave a comment

By James W. Lytle 

Concerns over New York State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with respect to its treatment of nursing homes, have recently re-emerged in light of a new report and court ruling related to the matter.

Almost from the outset of the pandemic, the State faced scrutiny as to whether it was accurately reporting deaths of nursing home patients.

After nursing homes complained in April about the lack of PPE and other resources to combat the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo responded that it was not the state’s responsibility, and asked the Department of Health and the Attorney General to launch investigations into nursing homes’ response to the pandemic.

Nine months later, in late January 2021, the report by New York State Attorney General Letitia James of the nursing home investigation was released.

Among the report’s headlines, the Attorney General’s preliminary analysis found that the Department of Health had undercounted deaths of nursing home residents due to COVID-19 by about 50%, largely because of the failure of the State to count the deaths of those residents who were transferred to hospitals immediately prior to their deaths. No other state excluded patients who had been transferred before death to hospitals from their nursing home fatality reports.

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Madison, Wisconsin / USA - April 24th, 2020: Nurses at Reopen Wisconsin Protesting against the protesters protesting safer at home order rally holding signs telling people to go home.

The Consequences of Public Health Law Vacuums

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By Daniel Goldberg

Pandemic planning documents and materials from the early 2000s to the present anticipated a great deal of what the U.S. has been experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The best of such plans documented exactly what be required to manage, respond, and control a pandemic spread by a highly communicable respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2.

What the plans did not account for was what we are now experiencing: That governments would simply refuse to govern.

Few truly accounted for the possibility that the very entities charged with regulating for the health, safety, and welfare of their residents and citizens would simply decline to do so, choosing instead the public health law vacuums in which we find ourselves at the present time. Read More

COVID-19 fake news concept illustration.

COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation and the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Dorit Reiss 18 Comments

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

The anti-vaccine movement is aggressively working to promote misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, up to and including promoting fake claims of deaths from vaccines. We need to be aware of its efforts, and be prepared to respond.

It’s worth emphasizing that this blog post is focused on the anti-vaccine movement, not people with concerns about vaccines (the “vaccine hesitant”).

In relation to COVID-19, anti-vaccine activists have aggressively promoted misinformation from the start of the pandemic.

In March 2020, anti-vaccine activists incorrectly alleged – by misrepresenting a study – that flu vaccines increase COVID-19 risks. In June, anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree described COVID-19 as a “cold,” blamed those who died for their own deaths, and called on his followers to “catch that cold.”

And from the beginning, anti-vaccine activists were committed to the ideas that COVID-19 vaccines would not work, would be dangerous, and would be promoted by a nefarious global conspiracy. They continue to spread these allegations, for example, using the fact that there are liability protections for COVID-19 vaccines to imply the vaccines are dangerous. Liability protections for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are real; but they are not evidence that the vaccines are unsafe.

This post will focus on one type of misinformation: alleged deaths from COVID-19 vaccines.

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hospital equipment

Balancing Health Care Rationing and Disability Rights in a Pandemic

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Yolanda Bustillo and Rachel Perler

Amid the present surge of the coronavirus pandemic, it is crucial that disability rights are a factor in the development of triage protocols.

During the last week of December, the CDC recorded a record of 225,269 new coronavirus cases and 118,948 total hospitalizations. Health care systems across the country have predicted that they soon may face shortages of ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other limited resources.

In Utah, for example, hospital administrators have implemented informal triage protocols that prioritize patients based on health status, clinical factors, and the time sensitivity of their needed procedures. Hospitals in California have similarly begun rationing care.

If these dire circumstances worsen, hospital systems may apply triage protocols that deviate from best practices and impermissibly discriminate against people with disabilities.

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Vial and syringe.

What to Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine Dosing Debate

Dorit Reiss 1 Comment

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

Faced with limited COVID-19 vaccine doses and the ever-mounting toll and strain of the pandemic, a new debate has emerged as to the best strategy for allocating the vaccines.

Both COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., which are produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, have been studied under two-dose clinical trials. The two-dose regime is thought to accord a more robust immune response against COVID-19.

In the U.K., however, due to concerns about the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, the government has deviated from established protocols. First, it decided to delay (but not omit) the administration of the second dose of the available vaccines, in order to increase the number of people getting at least one dose; second, it decided to allow mixing and matching of doses across vaccine types.

The United States is considering following the U.K. and moving to give more first doses, at the cost of delaying completion of the series.

Experts are sharply divided on whether that is a good or bad idea.

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Vial and syringe.

Congress Should Enact No-Fault Compensation for COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries

Dorit Reiss 1 Comment

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

If COVID-19 vaccines lead to any serious harms, society should compensate those victims generously and quickly.

Currently, under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers and providers are immune from liability.

Anyone seeking compensation for a severe side effect from a COVID-19 vaccine needs to go through a government program that is extremely narrow and hard to win; the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The program requires “compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence” to be compensated — a very high bar. It has compensated only a very small percentage of claims submitted over the years.

But we have an alternative. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) provides compensation under a much more generous standard. It has been used for years for childhood vaccines, and has served us well. While not perfect, it offers a decent path forward.

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2020 with second zero filled in with virion.

Bill of Health’s Top 10 Posts of 2020

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By Chloe Reichel

In 2020, topics relating to bioethics, health law policy, and biotechnology took center stage in the collective national and global consciousness.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, unfortunately, posed countless urgent bioethical and health law policy questions. The police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked wider awareness of the systemic racial injustice in the U.S., which permeates all aspects of society and has profound detrimental effects on health.

Our contributors have grappled with these issues on the pages of this blog. 

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Person receiving vaccine.

What You Should Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on December 3, 2020. 

By Jeff Neal

The race to approve and distribute a vaccine for COVID-19 got a huge shot in the arm this week.

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom approved a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. On the same day in the United States, a panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a first-stage plan for distributing the vaccine to some of the most at-risk Americans. Separately, another advisory committee is set to meet twice in the coming weeks to evaluate for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the safety and efficacy of both the Pfizer vaccine and a similar one produced by Moderna.

To better understand the impact of these developments, Harvard Law Today recently spoke with public health expert Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10, the executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, about the vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether employers and states can require people to get vaccinated.

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Sign that reads "Racism is a pandemic too."

Editor’s Choice: Important Reads on Race and Health

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

Racism was embedded in the founding of the United States and has persisted in virtually all aspects of our society through the present day.

In 2020, structural racism was made especially apparent in the disproportionate toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on communities of color, which can be traced back to the social determinants of health, and in grotesque displays of police violence, such as the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain.

Racism is the public health issue of our time, after having been woefully un- or under-addressed for centuries. The following posts, which were published on Bill of Health this year, highlight some of the most pressing issues to confront, as well as potential ways forward.

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