Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
To Blow Off Steam, Doctors Play — What Else? — A Game Called 'Pandemic'
As associate medical director of the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network in North Carolina, Sonali Advani assists more than 50 hospitals in the Southeast on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. She relaxes on weekends by playing her favorite board game. It’s called Pandemic. (Woo and Roland, 6/28)
In the six months since an entirely new coronavirus began spreading around the world, doctors and hospitals have learned a lot about how to treat patients with COVID-19, the potentially deadly disease caused by the virus. (Beasley and Brown, 6/29)
For months, President Trump has been contradicting his public health advisers over the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Over that same time, public health messages about the virus have been shifting. ... But a New York Times/Siena College survey shows a large majority of American registered voters quietly trust the advice of medical experts. (Sanger-Katz, 6/27)
Emergency 911 calls for medical help plummeted by more than 25 percent nationwide during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recently published University of Buffalo study. The study covered a six-week period beginning in early March and included an analysis of patient care records submitted by more than 10,000 EMS agencies across 47 states and territories, the university said Thursday in a statement. The findings were published online June 17 in Academic Emergency Medicine. (Andersen, 6/26)
Across the country, daily coronavirus cases are again eclipsing previous records, prolonging a crisis that's engulfed the national psyche. But over the past several months, as researchers' understanding of the virus has evolved, so, too, has the standard of care. Medical professionals have said American health care infrastructure is on firmer ground today than in March, when COVID-19 began overwhelming hospitals in major American cities. (Bruggeman, 6/29)
About one in six doctors in D.C. is African American, like Dr. Strudwick, according to the city's Department of Health. That's three times the national average, although still a small portion compared to the population that's 46% Black. These doctors see in their wards some of the African American patients who make up the vast majority of the city's COVID-19 fatalities. (Cheslow, 6/27)
As if Americans need yet another reason to avoid the dentist.Social distancing is the best way to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus until there’s a vaccine. When that’s not possible, we wear face masks. But what happens when we need to go to the dentist? Dental practices are adapting how they work in and around a patient’s mouth to account for this complicated reality. (Amenabar, 6/28)
In other news —
Dr. William Dement, whose introduction to the mysteries of slumber as a postgraduate student in the 1950s led him to become an eminent researcher of sleep disorders and to preach the benefits of a good night’s sleep, died on June 17 in Stanford, Calif. He was 91. His son, Nick, a physician, said the cause was complications of a heart procedure. (Sandomir, 6/27)
