Los Angeles Times: Law Punishing Doctors Who Spread COVID Misinformation May Be Undone
Tucked into a state Senate bill revising aspects of the Medical Board of California is a brief but unambiguous clause undoing a controversial law that was intended to curb “dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.” If the bill passes as expected this week, it will put an end to the saga of AB 2098, a well-intentioned, poorly worded and ultimately doomed effort to curb the most flagrant cases of COVID-related falsehoods by people wielding medical licenses. (Purtill, 9/11)

Sacramento Bee: California Could Add More Paid Sick Days For Workers. Here’s How Much Time They Would Get
Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, said it’s time that California increase the amount of mandated sick time, and she has introduced Senate Bill 616 to get it done. Initially, the measure would have mandated at least seven days of sick pay, but Gonzalez amended the bill last week to say at least five days. (Anderson, 9/9)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Atkins Bill Aimed At Improving County Jails In California Amended Again In Final Days 
A bill aimed at reforming county jails across California and better protecting people in custody has been amended again as it makes its way through the last days of the legislative session. (McDonald, 9/10)

Orange County Register: Defunct Sovereign Health To Pay $11 Million To Settle Wrongful Death Lawsuit
California is committing billions to bolster mental and behavioral health services through CARE courts — for “Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment” — aiming to get people with mental health and substance use disorders the support and care they need. That sounds great on paper, but threatens to compound the problems, said Allen Nelson, Brandon’s father. (Sforza, 9/11)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Influenza And RSV On The Horizon Amid COVID-19 Surge In Sonoma County; But Don’t Call It A ‘Tripledemic’ Yet
The winter cold and flu season is still months away, but medical professionals are already encouraging local residents to take precautionary steps against the spread of influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Sonoma County health care professionals say getting vaccinated ahead of the winter respiratory season is an important first step. (Espinoza, 9/9)

CIDRAP: Given Together, COVID And Flu Vaccines Appear Safe, Immune-Boosting
COVID-19 and influenza vaccines can be safety administered together, with no significant drop in antibody response, according to a study led by Sheba Medical Center researchers in Israel. The research, published today in JAMA Network Open, involved healthcare workers (HCWs) who received Abbott's Influvac Tetra (four-strain) flu vaccine, the bivalent (two-strain) COVID-19 booster from Pfizer/BioNTech, or both (one in each arm), from September 2022 to January 2023. (Van Beusekom, 9/8)

Bloomberg: Early Flu Shot Data Shows Effectiveness Against Hospitalization, CDC Says
Flu shots reduced people’s risk of being hospitalized for the disease by about half, according to early data from countries south of the equator, a positive sign for the US and Europe where the upcoming season is still on the horizon. Influenza vaccines formulated to target circulating flu strains were 52% effective at preventing hospitalizations in young children and older adults in the Southern Hemisphere, according the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly in line with how the shots usually perform. (Muller, 9/8)

Reuters: US CDC Says Existing Antibodies Can Work Against New COVID Variant 
Early research data has shown that antibodies produced by prior infection or existing vaccines against the coronavirus were sufficient to protect against the new BA.2.86 variant, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday. (9/8)

The New York Times: Covid Vaccines May Roll Out Within Days 
The latest Covid boosters are expected to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration as early as Monday, arriving alongside the seasonal flu vaccine and shots to protect infants and older adults from R.S.V., a potentially lethal respiratory virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to follow up on Tuesday with an advisory meeting to discuss who should get the new shots, by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. After a final decision by the C.D.C.’s director, millions of doses will be shipped to pharmacies, clinics and health systems nationwide within days. (Jewett, 9/11)

CIDRAP: Smart People First In Line For COVID-19 Vaccines, Study Suggests 
Intelligent people get their COVID-19 vaccines much faster, suggests a study of more than 750,000 people in Sweden published in the Journal of Health Economics. ... A total of 80% of the most intelligent people were vaccinated within 40 days of vaccine availability, while it took 180 days for those with the lowest cognitive ability to reach that level. The results, the researchers said, suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for people with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination. (Van Beusekom, 9/8)

USA Today: No, CDC Didn't Remove COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events From Its Website
An Aug. 28 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shared by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claims the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed an adverse reaction reporting system from its website. The CDC ended enrollment in its v-safe program, not its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Adverse reactions can still be reported, and data from v-safe is still available to the public, according to a spokesperson for the organization. (Hudnall, 9/8)

Boston Herald: A Pre-Pandemic Infection Could Explain Why Some Patients Develop Long COVID
The researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital teamed up with experts in immunology and virology to look for clues about long COVID in blood samples from patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases. The team found that among these patients, those who developed long COVID were more likely to have expanded, pro-inflammatory antibodies specific to a coronavirus that causes the common cold. (Sobey, 9/8)

Politico: Anthony Fauci: We ‘Need To Be Prepared’ For Likely Covid Uptick This Winter
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert in the U.S., isn’t sounding alarm bells on the rising number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. yet, but he did caution that the trend will continue into the fall and winter months. “I wouldn’t say that I’m alarmed but I’m certainly keeping an eye on it,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. The former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is now a professor at Georgetown University. (Garrity, 9/10)

The Washington Post: U.S.-Funded Hunt For Rare Viruses Halted Amid Risk Concerns
The Biden administration has halted funding for a research program that sought to discover and catalogue thousands of exotic pathogens from around the world, officials confirmed Thursday, effectively ending a controversial virus-hunting endeavor that opponents say raised the risk of an accidental outbreak. The U.S. Agency for International Development quietly notified the program’s main contractor in July that the $125 million project was being terminated less than two years after its inception, amid opposition from lawmakers as well as a number of prominent scientists and public health experts. (Warrick, 9/7)

Reuters: Meta Platforms Must Face Medical Privacy Class Action 
A U.S. federal judge said Meta Platforms must face a lawsuit claiming that it violated the medical privacy of patients who were treated by hospitals and other healthcare providers that used its Meta Pixel tracking tool. U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said the plaintiffs could pursue claims that Meta violated a federal wiretap law and a California privacy law, and violated its own contractual promises governing user privacy on Facebook. (Stempel, 9/8)

CNBC: Meta's VR Technology Is Helping To Train Surgeons And Treat Patients
Just days before assisting in his first major shoulder-replacement surgery last year, Dr. Jake Shine strapped on a virtual reality headset and got to work. As a third-year orthopedics resident at Kettering Health Dayton in Ohio, Shine was standing in the medical center’s designated VR lab with his attending physician, who would oversee the procedure. Both doctors were wearing Meta Quest 2 headsets as they walked through a 3D simulation of the surgery. (Capoot, 9/9)

The Washington Post: Silicon Valley’s Quest To Live Forever Now Includes $2,500 Full-Body MRIs
Jessica Jensen always thought of herself as a healthy enough person. The Silicon Valley executive ate well and worked out once a week — all while juggling a job managing 500 people and her daughter, a soon-to-be middle-schooler. But in spring 2021, she heard about Prenuvo, a boutique clinic offering a “full-body MRI.” While MRIs are typically used to diagnose a particular problem, Prenuvo touts the service as a routine preventive measure, like a colonoscopy or a mammogram. Jensen was intrigued, and her husband persuaded her to try the scan on the eve of her 50th birthday. The day after the scan, which cost $2,499 out of pocket, a Prenuvo nurse called to tell Jensen the MRI had detected a hard-looking two millimeter cyst on her pancreas. Doctors confirmed her fears: She had stage 1 pancreatic cancer. (Dwoskin, 9/10)

Fresno Bee: Clovis Parents Want To Know If Students Change Pronouns 
Clovis parents and others spoke for almost an hour at the latest school board meeting, demanding that elected officials create a written policy to notify parents when students at school decide to change their pronouns, names and gender identity. (Diaz, 9/10)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Sonoma County Board Of Supervisors Prepares To Award Another $3.3 Million To DEMA To Manage 3 Housing Sites, As Audit Continues 
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors is poised to extend DEMA Consulting & Management’s contract and award it $3.3 million to manage three housing sites for homeless people through November even as an audit of the company’s previous billing continues. (Graham, 9/10)

EdSource: 570 California Schools Targeted For Low Vaccination Rates
More than 500 California public schools are being audited by the state because they reported that more than 10% of their kindergarten or seventh-grade students were not fully vaccinated last school year. Schools that allow students to attend school without all their vaccinations are in jeopardy of losing funding. (Lambert, Willis and Xie, 9/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area County Rolls Out New Help To Pay For Prescription Drug Costs
County officials have announced they are widening eligibility for the program, called MedAssist, begun last year to help middle-income earners pay for diabetes medications, EpiPens and asthma inhalers. It gives enrollees checks or direct deposits of $34 to $500 a month, with the amount depending on income, annual health care spending and medications. ... The program and its expansion helps fill a growing need as Americans struggle to shoulder the rising costs of prescription drugs. (Ho, 9/8)

Axios: Presidential Advisers Recommend White House Create Patient Safety Team
The White House should create a national patient safety team to help reduce high levels of dangerous care in the medical system, presidential advisers recommended Thursday. Progress in addressing preventable harms like medication errors and hospital-acquired infections has been "unacceptably slow," necessitating a White House-led initiative to improve patient safety, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology wrote in a report. (Goldman, 9/8)

Stat: NIH Nominee Bertagnolli Will Get October Confirmation Hearing
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will hold a confirmation hearing next month for Monica Bertagnolli, President Biden’s nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, he said Friday. Sanders, whose health committee oversees the confirmation of the NIH nominee, had refused to hold a hearing on Bertagnolli until the Biden administration promised more drug pricing reform. (Wilkerson, 9/8)

Stat: House Transparency, PBM Reform Bill Gains Bipartisan Support
A Democrat has signed on to a legislative package that would require health care transparency by law and enact modest payment reforms to pharmacy middlemen and hospitals, increasing its chances of passing the House of Representatives. (Cohrs, 9/8)

Politico: Abortion Pill Challenge Returns To SCOTUS 
The future of the most popular method of terminating a pregnancy is back before the Supreme Court after the Biden administration and pharmaceutical company Danco appealed a lower court ruling rolling back years of FDA policies broadening access to the drug. The Supreme Court is unlikely to consider the case until next year at the earliest, and the justices previously ruled that no changes to federal regulation of the pills will happen until then — leaving the current state-by-state patchwork of access in place for now. (Ollstein, 9/8)

NBC News: Republicans Try To Find New Term For Pro-Life To Stave Off More Electoral Losses
Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from “pro-life” messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot. At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room. ... Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday’s meeting as being focused on “pro-baby policies.” (Tsirkin, Santaliz, Leach and Brown-Kaiser, 9/7)

AP: Republican Opposition To Abortion Threatens Global HIV/AIDS Program That Has Saved 25 Million Lives
The graves at the edge of the orphanage tell a story of despair. The rough planks in the cracked earth are painted with the names of children, most of them dead in the 1990s. That was before the HIV drugs arrived. Today, the orphanage in Kenya’s capital is a happier, more hopeful place for children with HIV. But a political fight taking place in the United States is threatening the program that helps to keep them and millions of others around the world alive. The reason for the threat? Abortion. (Musambi, Amiri, Anna and Knickmeyer, 9/9)

Roll Call: With Naloxone Now More Available, HHS Officials Tout Its Use
During the same week that naloxone — a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses — became available for purchase without a prescription, the nation’s top substance use officials called for greater availability and training for the drug, with five federal officials receiving training to administer it during a public demonstration at Health and Human Services headquarters Friday. (Raman, 9/8)

Axios: Biden Admin Wants Employers To Make Opioid Overdose Reversal Drug Available
The Biden administration is urging employers to keep the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone on hand, comparing it to workplaces preparing emergency plans in case of a fire. Narcan, a nasal spray version of naloxone, became available over-the-counter at major retailers for the first time this week amid record levels of overdoses from increasingly lethal forms of opioids like fentanyl. (Reed, 9/10)

AP: Kroger Agrees To Pay Up To $1.4 Billion To Settle Opioid Lawsuits 
One of the nation’s largest grocery chains is the latest company to agree to settle lawsuits over the U.S. opioid crisis. In a deal announced Friday, the Kroger Co. would pay up to $1.4 billion over 11 years. The amount includes up to $1.2 billion for state and local governments where it operates, $36 million to Native American tribes and about $177 million to cover lawyers’ fees and costs. (Mulvihill, 9/8)

Axios: The Politicization Of The Fentanyl Crisis
The country's fentanyl crisis has become a potent political weapon, reflecting its deep and emotional impact on millions of Americans. The opioid epidemic was once a rare topic that brought Republicans and Democrats together. But even as overdose deaths continue to climb, the discourse around fentanyl has become more politicized and, at times, less aligned with reality — especially when Republicans talk about its connection to the U.S.-Mexico border. (Owens, 9/11)