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The Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid vaccines on Thursday, clearing the way for manufacturers to ship doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices. Moderna and Pfizer, which make the most commonly used Covid vaccines, are expected to begin shipping soon; Pfizer said it would do so “immediately,” and Moderna has done so within days of approval in past years. Sanofi, which distributes a non-mRNA option called Nuvaxovid (commonly known as Novavax), said doses would be available in the coming days, with the timing varying by location. ... The updated vaccines target the XFG variant of Covid, as an F.D.A. committee recommended this spring. That should be a good match for the virus that is circulating, said Dr. Ian Mellis, an assistant professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University. XFG is the most common variant in North America as of late August. (Astor, 8/27)

Parasitic illness cases linked to recalled iceberg lettuce have now been confirmed in 20 states, federal health officials said Thursday, expanding the scope of the largest outbreak of its kind in the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration said government scientists have now identified cases in three additional states: Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. (Perrone, 8/27)

As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) end their investigation into the June Listeria outbreak tied to soft cheese, the FDA is reporting a new outbreak, this one involving Salmonella from an unidentified food source. The CDC has also released updated case counts for several smaller Cyclospora outbreaks. (Van Beusekom, 8/27)

A major produce lobby group asked US health officials to change how they communicate about a parasite outbreak that’s sickened thousands, citing battered consumer confidence and sagging sales of fruit and vegetables. The International Fresh Produce Association asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration to be more precise about which foods are unsafe to eat and urge Americans to keep eating fresh fruits and vegetables, the group said in an Aug. 10 letter viewed by Bloomberg News. (Nix, 8/27)

After nearly 30 days with no updates, the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) this week posted several recent H5N1 avian flu detections in both commercial poultry and dairy cattle. In the past 30 days there have been three confirmed detections in dairy cows, with Texas reporting two affected herds and Utah reporting a single detection. (Soucheray, 8/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Summer’s Health Policy Themes

Summer may be approaching its end, but the health policy stories that have marked the season continue. In Washington and across the country, public health officials are still struggling with outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, while states and health systems are preparing for the impact of major federal funding cuts to their Medicaid programs. (Rovner, 8/27)

The Ebola epidemic sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo may be three times larger than official figures indicate, Africa’s top public-health agency said, suggesting thousands of infections are going undetected as authorities struggle to track transmission. Congo has officially recorded 5,713 confirmed infections and 2,744 deaths through Aug. 25. An outbreak three times that size would imply about 17,100 infections. The confirmed case-fatality ratio has climbed to 48% from 27% two months earlier. (Gale, Ambaye and Kew, 8/27)

The Ebola outbreak in Uganda is over now that 42 days have passed without a new confirmed case since the country’s last patient, who contracted the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was discharged from care on July 16. In total, the country had 20 confirmed cases and two deaths. The news comes as funding for a new candidate vaccine is announced. (Soucheray, 8/27)

Two employees at Frankfurt Airport died from a rare malaria outbreak this summer, most likely after a mosquito traveled to Germany on an airplane, the airport’s operator said this week. Six employees have contracted the disease since early July, Andreas Schopf, a spokesman for the airport’s operator, Fraport, said in an email on Thursday. Four have since recovered, he added. It was unclear when the two employees died. (Moses, 8/27)

In the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Charity Hospital in New Orleans became a scene of heartbreak and heroism, with doctors scrambling to keep patients alive without power or functioning medical equipment while floodwaters trapped them inside its darkened halls for days on end. The massive hospital, a New Orleans landmark that long cared for the city’s most vulnerable residents, was shuttered after the last patients and staff were rescued in 2005. Now, as Louisiana marks the storm’s 21st anniversary Saturday, the long-vacant storm-damaged building is on the brink of new life. (Brook, 8/28)

Corewell Health is investing $440 million to build a new hospital tower as an addition to its Troy hospital. The project includes an eight-story, 423,000-square-foot tower that includes 180 private rooms and a new emergency department waiting room at Corewell Health Beaumont Troy Hospital. The expansion, which was first reported in October, will add 180 beds to the new tower, pushing the hospital to a total of 654 beds. (Walsh, 8/27)

The Villages Health System has agreed to pay $541.5 million to resolve allegations it violated the False Claims Act. The provider was acquired by Humana’s CenterWell Senior Primary Care in November 2025. The previous December, Villages Health self-reported to the government it had submitted invalid diagnosis codes to Medicare Advantage organizations, leading to higher payments for patient care, the Justice Department said in a news release Wednesday. The provider in January 2025 notified the affected insurers of the discrepancy, including Humana. (DeSilva, 8/27)

Major pharmacy benefit managers Prime Therapeutics and Express Scripts are facing more antitrust allegations. The Florida attorney general’s office sued the two companies in state court Thursday, claiming the PBMs’ network management agreement allegedly improperly lowered retail pharmacy rates and violated antitrust laws. “Prime and Express Scripts colluded to fix prices and underpay those pharmacies, forcing many to fill prescriptions at a loss,” Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) said in a news release. (Tepper, 8/27)

Insurers have a new headache to relieve when it comes to the No Surprises Act. A federal appeals court this month affirmed a ruling requiring the government to scrap how it calculates a key metric that determines reimbursements for out-of-network claims through the Independent Dispute Resolution process. The decision will force federal agencies to issue new guidance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Tong, 8/27)

A study conducted at four hospitals in Atlanta found that improved hand hygiene had no impact on detection of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), researchers reported today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. (Dall, 8/27)

Scientists are getting a step closer to understanding exactly how autism develops in the brain – and what might work to treat it. (Howard, 8/27)

Vaccines took center stage at the federal autism advisory committee meeting Thursday, as committee members explicitly pointed to vaccines as a potential cause of autism, even though the link has been routinely debunked. (Broderick, 8/28)

UCSF has received a $46 million grant from a foundation backed by Google cofounder Sergey Brin to advance autism research and potential therapies, one of the largest single grants the university has gotten for basic research. The award comes from Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA), an initiative funded by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, and goes to Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI), a research unit within UCSF. (Ho, 8/27)

A day after New Year’s, 2025, a 91-year-old man fatally shot his 89-year-old wife in their house in Camarillo, California. He called the police to confess before killing himself. “They were inseparable for the 64 years they were together,” according to the couple’s joint obituary. (Mascia and Brownlee, 8/27)

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was tied to a lower risk of dementia in a prospective study of nearly 185,000 postmenopausal women in the U.K. Biobank. (George, 8/27)

Harmonica lessons could be helping patients regain voices weakened by the progressive movement disorder, a boon for patients and their families. (Kim, 8/28)

The proportion of women never screened for cervical cancer increased by more than 5% per year from 2005 to 2023, a cross-sectional study showed. (Bassett, 8/27)

These days when Karen Daggett goes to see her doctors at South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest, she’s known as the “dog patient.” For Daggett, of Chicago Heights, it’s a bittersweet reminder of a family pet that may have saved her life. (Neumann, 8/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Why Older Pedestrians Fare Worse In Car Crashes

On an August morning two years ago, Meredith Melville was crossing Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California, to meet a friend at a cafe. While in the crosswalk, she noticed a car some distance away. Perhaps she misjudged its speed, she said, because she’d walked only partway across the street when the car, a Toyota sedan, came bearing down on her. (Span, 8/28)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cast doubt on Pennsylvania officials’ statements about two recent measles-related deaths, intensifying a dispute between the Trump administration and the state over the disease outbreak. In a social media post, the top US public health agency said Governor Josh Shapiro has rejected help from the agency and declined to provide more information on the deaths. The CDC also thanked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for raising questions about whether the two people had actually died from measles. (Nix, 8/27)

The death of two Pennsylvanians with measles has sparked a social media row between the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dispute has also reprised a Covid 19-era debate: How much does it matter whether someone died from a disease or just died with a disease? Pennsylvania health authorities strongly implied that the two died from measles in announcing their deaths Tuesday but also left some wiggle room in describing the deaths as “measles-associated.” (Paun, 8/27)

After the Pennsylvania Health Department announced Wednesday that one of the two people whose deaths in the state were associated with measles was an infant, the coroner involved in the case has said he does not consider measles to be the cause of death. The Lancaster County coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, said in an interview Wednesday evening that the baby died shortly after birth from an internal hemorrhage and “traumatic rupture” of the spleen. He said he found evidence of the measles virus in the infant’s lung tissue. (Mayk, Bendix and Edwards, 8/27)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation last year that a 2019 visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.” New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian refute that testimony. Kennedy, then a prominent anti-vaccine activist, preceded the visit with a letter to the Samoan prime minister requesting to study the Pacific island nation’s measles, mumps and rubella vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times. (Swenson, 8/27)

The CDC has launched a new "enterprise transformation project" called CDC Voyager that's left employees wondering exactly what it will mean for the agency's future. Sean Slovenski, CDC's principal deputy director and chief operating officer, announced the project in an email late last week, after new director Erica Schwartz, MD, MPH, was sworn in. (Fiore, 8/27)

The Health and Human Services Department is pushing the collaboration of health systems and insurers with community service organizations to drive down healthcare costs. The department launched the Health at Home Challenge last spring. The $6 million, two-year initiative is aimed at bolstering community care hubs that connect providers and insurers to smaller community groups offering nonmedical services. The collaborations could help keep dual-eligible Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries and at-risk Medicare beneficiaries healthy and out of the hospital. (Eastabrook, 8/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump And Kennedy’s Health Industry Deals Haven’t Been Enforced And Are At Risk Of Vanishing

In the thick of his competitive reelection race in Michigan, Republican Rep. Tom Barrett joined Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a sprawling 400-acre apple orchard, farm, and winery. They touted Trump administration efforts to improve the American diet, including the removal of some artificial dyes from processed foods. “We had a great discussion about healthy options for all Americans and taking back control of our healthcare,” Barrett said in a June Instagram post, after sampling the farm’s apple cider. (Armour, 8/28)

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled against a lawsuit filed by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry challenging the federal Medicare drug price negotiation program, finding that drugmakers are not entitled to sell their products to Medicare at a price they would prefer. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed a prior ruling granting summary judgment against the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing the pharmaceutical industry. (Choi, 8/27)

A coalition of states sued the Trump administration Thursday to block changes to a family planning grant program that it alleges would strip federal funding from states and providers unless they align with the administration’s political views and priorities. The lawsuit by officials from 23 states, filed in Maryland federal court, argues that new conditions on Title X funding will unlawfully penalize states and providers that offer gender-affirming care or refuse to adhere to the administration’s ideology on contraception. (Weixel, 8/27)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) released a report on Thursday criticizing the Food and Drug Administration for not tightening restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, and charging the agency with lackluster oversight of the companies that manufacture the drug. (Manto, 8/27)

After cutting more than $660 million last year from programs to get locally grown food into school lunchrooms, the Trump administration is announcing a series of smaller grants to improve healthy options in schools. But some district leaders say it’s nowhere near enough. (Sheridan, 8/28)

A Navy sailor who jumped overboard in an apparent suicide attempt while serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is facing disciplinary action, the service member’s wife told MS NOW Wednesday. The wife, who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity, said the service member was accused of violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The sailor jumped overboard on Aug. 3 and had been repeatedly denied requests for paternity leave, his wife said. (Orellana Hernandez, 8/27)

The first emergency call about a detainee trying to harm himself came about a month after Camp East Montana — an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas — started to house immigrants. It was 2:50 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12. “We have a patient currently in holding who is saying he’s got suicidal ideations, swallowed some foreign object, has refused our basic medical care here,” a nurse told the operator. In the audio, you can hear that someone is moaning and yelling in the background. (Trevizo, 8/28)

Canada has awarded 64 global scholars with C$504 million ($362 million) in funding to relocate their work to Canadian universities and advance projects in areas such as health and artificial intelligence. Some 48 of the researchers were poached from the US, including from elite institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The other 16 researchers are coming from 12 other countries, including the UK, Germany, China and Japan. ... Canada’s effort to lure top research talent contrasts with recent US federal funding cuts that, combined with tightening immigration policies and clashes between the Trump administration and top-tier universities, have led some scholars to look for opportunities elsewhere. (Mallees, 8/27)

On a recent afternoon, scientists buzzed around a lab in Cambridge, Mass., performing experiments. Their equipment was standard: a lab hood for working with dangerous chemicals, an incubator for growing cells. Their procedures were identical to those in biology labs everywhere. A closer look revealed some oddities, though. Along with lab coats and gloves, most of the scientists wore miniature cameras on headbands. Three additional cameras peered down at each work station from a shelf. (Zimmer, 8/27)

Three years after a closely watched research misconduct investigation of Stanford’s then-president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, led to his resignation, the prominent neuroscientist revealed new details this week from his research and travel in an attempt to refute allegations that he published fraudulent results and orchestrated a cover-up. (Wosen, 8/27)

The Food and Drug Administration approved a once-daily HIV pill from Gilead that could help simplify care for some patients, the company announced Thursday. (Constantino, 8/27)

The FDA approved the first oral treatment option for the autoimmune disorder dermatomyositis. Brepocitinib (Lisraya) is indicated for adults with the rare condition, which causes chronic inflammation, progressive muscle weakness, and skin rashes. The oral drug addresses a longstanding need for patients who have few treatment options for symptom control. (Bankhead, 8/27)

Three new studies add to a growing body of research showing that men and boys vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV) are much less likely than others to be infected with the ubiquitous virus, which can cause cancers of the head and neck, anus, and penis, as well as genital warts. (Szabo, 8/27)

AstraZeneca on Friday detailed the surprise failure of a closely watched heart disease clinical trial, laying out how its experimental drug offered no additional benefits for patients who were largely already on another type of medicine — the latest twist in a multi-billion dollar market. (Joseph, 8/28)

Earlier this year, an oncology biotech with no drugs on the market—just promising research—was attracting takeover interest. Revolution Medicines stayed independent. This week, that bet paid off. (Martinez, 8/27)

Joan Rubinger overcame a catastrophic biking accident that left her paralyzed to become an influential pain-relief specialist helping top-tier athletes get back on the field after acute and chronic injuries. ... But behind the scenes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleged in court filings, Rubinger doled out thousands of illegal prescriptions for highly addictive painkillers, a “covert and slinking” scheme the nurse practitioner likened to selling hamburgers at a fast-food restaurant. Over a four-year period, federal authorities said, the nurse practitioner prescribed 260,000 pills containing controlled substances to patients in more than 20 states. (Goodman, Mustian and Pells, 8/28)

Nobody could overlook the off-the-field community work — bankrolling a college scholarship endowment, a Thanksgiving food drive, a Christmastime gift giveaway — that cast Thomas Davis of the Carolina Panthers as one of the true good guys around Charlotte and across the NFL. ... Turns out, all those comebacks from all that pain took their toll and led to a deeper and more troubling story: As his career wound down, Davis became dependent on opioids, an addiction he blames for the unseemly breakup with his wife, Kelly, and the sullying of his once-pristine reputation. (Pells, Mastian and Goodman, 8/28)

California will levy financial penalties against hospitals, health insurance companies and medical practices that don’t beat spending benchmarks. The California Office of Health Care Affordability voted unanimously Wednesday to discipline covered entities with penalties up to 125% of the amount covered entities spend above state-imposed growth targets. Providers and insurers also could face penalties up to $10,000 per day if they repeatedly fail to file acceptable performance improvement plans, or flat penalties up to $500,000 for not implementing corrective action plans or for falsifying information. (Hudson, 8/27)

Laura Richardson pays $450 a month out of pocket for a drug that could keep her off insulin for the rest of her life. She’s a California state senator — and even she can’t get her own insurance to cover it. Richardson started using a GLP-1 a year ago after learning she was pre-diabetic. Her state health plan does not cover it. (Ibarra, 8/27)

South Carolina Senate Democratic nominee Annie Andrews on Wednesday dismissed “Medicare for All” as an outdated policy as she seeks to become the first Democrat to win a statewide race in the Palmetto State in more than 25 years. “Medicare for All is a policy from a few decades ago,” Andrews, a physician, told host Leland Vittert on NewsNation’s “On Balance.” She added, “I’m a pragmatic person. When you work as a physician, you have to be a problem solver. You roll up your sleeves, you solve the problem in front of you, you work with whoever you need to work with, you don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” (Rego, 8/27)

Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group (also known as United Healthcare) and Optum, Inc., alleging they defrauded the Maryland Medicaid Program by supplying a defective computer system. (Buckheit, 8/27)

Easterseals NH, which provides services for individuals with disabilities statewide, said in a statement Thursday that it will continue operations of adult day programs in Manchester and Rochester, as well as certain in-home services in Strafford and Hillsborough counties, following a vote by the organization’s board of directors. (Richardson, 8/27)

Children in Oregon’s rural counties are more likely to spend at least one day in the foster care system than those living in urban areas, according to an InvestigateWest analysis of public data from the state’s child welfare agency. Since at least 2020, rural counties have consistently accounted for the highest rates of foster care involvement in Oregon, with some southeastern communities seeing rates three times higher than Multnomah County, the state’s most populous county. (Dawson, 8/27)

A typical kid riding a normal pedal bicycle can cruise down the street at about 10 mph, maybe faster if they’re really cooking. A kid on an e-bike can hit speeds of up to 28 mph. But a kid riding on an e-motorcycle, a machine that may resemble a bicycle or may look more like a dirt bike, can go much faster — sometimes above 50 mph depending on the model. One consequence of this is increasingly showing up in the Children’s Hospital Colorado emergency room. (Ingold, 8/28)

Jury deliberations are set to resume on Friday morning in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with murder for strangling her three young children in 2023. After more than four weeks of often emotional testimony in the high-profile case, the lawyers on each side made their closing arguments at the courthouse in Plymouth, Mass., on Thursday. It was their final opportunity to convince the jurors whether or not Ms. Clancy should be held criminally responsible for the children’s deaths. (Fortin, 8/28)

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse who killed her three kids, has brought renewed attention to the most tragic outcomes of postpartum psychosis. However, an expert told MedPage Today that postpartum psychosis is a complicated condition with a continuum of severity, and one group in particular has heightened risk. Nancy Byatt, DO, MS, MBA, a perinatal psychiatrist and professor at the UMass Chan Medical School in Shrewsbury, explained that postpartum psychosis occurs in 1 to 2 per 1,000 births. (Robertson, 8/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: High Fertility Costs Push Americans Abroad For IVF Treatment

In the summer of 2024, Emilie and Justin Solomon found themselves on a top-secret mission in Greece. Their family and friends thought the adventure-loving couple was on another jet-setting vacation, but they were keeping something else under wraps: They had turned off their phone locations to hide visits to a Greek clinic where they were trying to get pregnant. (Dawson, 8/28)

Scientists are beginning to study the ways that exercise can help bereaved people navigate loss. (Penman, 8/25)

At Gallaudet University, a school for deaf and hard of hearing students, not everyone shows up knowing ASL. A program offers help. (Solano, 8/26)

Intrinsic capacity is quickly becoming a preferred way to measure and assess human aging. (Smith, 8/26)

He was only 12 when he lost most of his relatives. After liberation, he came to New York. He’s been in his current apartment since the 1970s, and half a century later the primary reason he is still able to live under his own roof is because of the help he gets from a grass-roots organization called Lifeforce in Later Years.(Gibson, 8/26)

A fungus turns the crop into a carcinogenic time bomb. This Senegalese scientist says he can fix that. (Thompson, 8/24)

Bird flu is sweeping across Australia, devastating its unique birds and mammals, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. Already, mass mortality events have killed more than 1,000 birds, and the disease has crossed into seals. (Chung, 8/25)

Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja said he lived in the wild for about 11 years with the help of wolves and other animals. (Livni, 8/24)

Raise your hand if you have affordable, accessible healthcare. Anyone? Yeah, that’s what I thought. With independent studies showing that close to half of all Americans struggle to afford healthcare, I expect I got the rest of you with the addition of the word “accessible.” (Marj Halperin, 8/28)

One year ago, we jointly submitted our resignations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each of us had been tested as we tried to protect our communities and the agency we loved, but we realized we could no longer remain quiet under this administration. (Debra Houry, Daniel Jernigan and Demetre Daskalakis, 8/28)

The case has captivated millions. Let’s use that attention to better understand postpartum mental illness. (Kara Bettis Carvalho, 8/27)

Beatrice (not her real name) is here to see me after her fall, but our visit doesn’t end there. I watch the security footage of the fall on her phone, check her head to toe, and plan a pain regimen that won’t worsen her gastritis. And then I tackle her renewed anxiety, adjust her thyroid medication, offer an overdue vaccine, and plan for our nurse to check in later that week. (Ishani Ganguli, 8/28)

Biotech stocks are performing well as investors bet that AI will speed up drug discovery and save billions of dollars in research costs. (Shuli Ren, 8/26)

A morning at Dana-Farber reveals the strange common ground of cancer: the waiting, the uncertainty, and the small moments of humanity in between. (Joan Wickersham, 8/28)