Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT), a global leader in healthcare technology, today announced that the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will expand Medicare coverage for all types of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), including adjunctive and non-adjunctive CGMs. This includes CGMs that integrate with Medtronic insulin pumps. The proposed rule was finalized onDecember 21, 2021and will be effective starting 60 days after official publication.
This expanded coverage also ensures continuity of therapy for people on certain Medtronic insulin pump systems transitioning into Medicare — including Medtronic hybrid closed loop systems which automatically adjust insulin delivery based on readings from the integrated CGM. Medtronic will continue to offer its CGM Access Discount(opens new window)
to all Medicare customers until the ruling takes effect.
"The CMS ruling brings much needed relief for the many individuals with diabetes who, like me, desire to continue on their Medtronic insulin pump as they transition into Medicare. I'm very appreciative of the company's efforts to make CGM as affordable as possible while they worked with CMS to make this a reality," said Terry Weland. "I've experienced tremendous benefits from integrated pump therapy, and I'm thrilled that this opens up access for many more people looking for ways to enhance their diabetes management. CGM technology is important to me and many others like me to help maintain good glucose control and better health outcomes."
Dr. Anthony Faucion Sunday said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is considering further amending its isolation guidance for individuals who test positive for COVID-19 but remain asymptomatic.
Asked by host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” why the CDC does not require that individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 receive a negative test before leaving quarantine as an “extra layer of protection,” Fauci said such a requirement is under consideration.
“You're right, there has been some concern about why we don't ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration,” Fauci said.
The CDC last week revised its COVID-19 isolation guidelines by cutting the recommended quarantine from 10 days to five days for people who test positive and remain asymptomatic. For the subsequent five days, the health agency recommends that individuals wear a mask around others at all times.
Fauci on Sunday said the health agency is “very aware” of the pushback generated by the new guidelines.
“The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that. Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we're going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC,” he added.
The White House medical adviser, during a separate appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, explained the rationale behind the shortened quarantine period of asymptomatic patients.
Fauci said “the likelihood of transmissibility is considerably lower in that second half of a 10-day period.”
“And for that reason, the CDC made the judgment that it would be relatively low-risk to get people out,” he added.
Fauci on CNN said the new guidance “has generated a number of questions about at that five-day period, should you or should you not be testing people.”
Mayor de Blasio’s obsession with race already hurt our schools and our police department, so why not go the extra mile and sacrifice our lives? Rather than distribute city COVID testing resources based on population, his administration prioritized neighborhoods that have “borne the brunt of this pandemic due to structural racism,” a Health Department representative told The Post.
Meanwhile, the distribution of COVID medicine such as monoclonal antibodies “will consider race and ethnicity when assessing individual risk.”
But what is that risk? Not race, but class, says a Harvard epidemiologist and professor. “I have not seen [race] as one of the risk factors for severe disease and death,” Martin Kulldorff told The Post. “The reason that a lot of African Americans have died in New York — which is true — is because the rich people and more affluent were working from home while the working class were exposed.”
Yet City Hall, as it has done repeatedly for the past eight years, decided to fuel racial division instead.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio cared more about race than serving New Yorkers.AP Photo/Richard Drew, File“I have not seen [race] as one of the risk factors for severe disease and death,” Martin Kulldorff told The Post.Shutterstock
We don’t need to make these decisions at all. New York City is awash in federal aid. Congress allocated the Department of Health and Human Services $480 billion for hospitals and health care, of which only a fraction has been spent.
De Blasio just wanted to preen for the progressives and show off his “Taskforce on Racial Inclusion & Equity.” If one person dies in this city because they didn’t get the treatment they need or weren’t properly tested, that blood is on his hands.
Mayor Eric Adams must focus on delivering at-home COVID-19 tests to every city neighborhood.Robert Miller
Mayor Adams now has the opportunity to stop this nonsense. Get at-home tests and city centers to any neighborhoods that want them. Disband De Blasio’s task force. And let’s have a city government aimed at helping all New Yorkers.
The city’s ambulance corps are so understaffed because of the COVID-19 surge, they’re now under new orders to try to convince stable patients with flu-like symptoms not to go to the hospital.
The directive from the FDNY puts EMS crews on notice that “effective immediately, stable patients with influenza-like illness … should not be transported to a 911-receiving facility” unless they meet certain criteria: being over 65 years old, having a fever above 100.4 degrees or a history of diabetes or heart conditions, according to a copy obtained by The Post.
Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507, the union representing more than 4,100 rank-and-file city emergency medical technicians and paramedics, said Saturday more than 30% of his members are out of medical leave – and a vast of majority of the absences are due to staff catching COVID-19 on the front lines.
About 20-25%, or about 800 members, are out specifically because they caught COVID-19, Barzilay estimated — adding the city only has itself to blame for not dealing with longtime staffing shortage of medics.
Both he and Vincent Variale, president of the city’s EMS Officers Union Local 3621, said the new orders might be necessary as 911 calls have skyrocketed the past month.
“It’s a shame that two years into the pandemic, the city isn’t prepared to deal with COVID,” Barzilay told The Post.
EMS union reps said their members see no evidence of city hospitals being overwhelmed by a lack of beds to deal with COVID-19 patients.Stephen Yang
The EMS staffing crisis comes as the NYPD has its own struggles with coronavirus absences, sources said: there were 6,883 cops out sick Saturday – including 1,920 with COVID-19 – or nearly 20 percent of the Police Department.
Five are now hospitalized.In December, 3053 cops tested positive – breaking a previous record since the pandemic started of 2,846 during April 2020. But the stricken EMS service, which a source said had dozens of ambulance crews out of service in Brooklyn alone last week due to the staffing crisis, has an easy fix at its disposal, Variale said.
About 200 medics could be allowed to come back to work, he said, after they were put on unpaid leave because of a city mandate requiring municipal workers be vaccinated for COVID-19.
City medics are also routinely putting in 60 and 70-hour weeks. The FDNY last week temporarily lifted an overtime cap applying to all city agencies that prohibits municipal workers from making more than 40 percent of their salary in overtime, Barzilay said.
Variale said city medics are already trained to determine whether a patient needs to go a hospital.
The FDNY last week temporarily lifted an overtime cap.Daniel William McKnight
Under the new order they’ll call an FDNY emergency doctor on duty to help decide whether a patient who appears stable should be taken to a hospital, he said.
The doctor could get on the phone and directly ask the patients questions to help make a decision, he added.
“We don’t want to tell anyone they can’t go to a hospital, but we are vastly understaffed, so we have to do what we can to triage all this and decide who should be going and who shouldn’t,” Variale said.
However, one veteran paramedic said, “it’s ridiculous to put this kind of pressure on a crew.”
“The FDNY ambulance crew cannot just leave you, and say ‘Sorry we’re not doing anything’ and drive off. It’s abandonment,” the source said.
The FDNY acknowledged the order was due to “high medical leave” among EMS workers because of the COVID surge, but didn’t immediately respond to further questions Saturday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this week announced 80 members of the National Guard are being trained to become certified EMTs to assist in the shortage.Hans Pennink
EMS union reps said their members see no evidence of city hospitals being overwhelmed by a lack of beds to deal with COVID-19 patients.
A spokesman for NYC Health+Hospitals said capacity in the city’s hospital system is “stable,” while a Northwell Health spokesman said the system was “well within manageable levels” of patient beds.
Admissions for COVID are up at New York Presbyterian, but stays are shorter and coronavirus cases in the hospital’s intensive care units are behind where they were last year, said Chief Surgeon Craig R. Smith in a message to colleagues Friday.
The Omicron variant accounts for 80% of the cases, Smith said, noting that next week the hospital would reschedule some elective surgeries as it staffs just two-thirds of its operating rooms.
There is some help on the way. Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this week announced 80 members of the National Guard are being trained to become certified EMTs and help both with medic shortages both in city and upstate regions.
The Sunday Times in London said Walgreens “received a takeover approach from Bain Capital more than two months ago” and is “positioning itself as a frontrunner in a forthcoming auction for Boots after completing months of due diligence.” Walgreens was unavailable for comment Saturday night.
It’s the latest report on the future of Walgreens more than 2,000 Boots pharmacies. There has also been news Walgreens was looking at other options for the Boots drugstores, including a potential spin off into a separate company.
The reports on the U.K. business come as Walgreens is spending billions of dollars on its U.S. drugstore operations at the direction of new chief executive officer Roz Brewer. Walgreens recently invested another $5.2 billion in VillageMD to escalate the expansion of doctor-staffed clinics across the U.S. under a new “Walgreens Health” business.
Walgreens new management has been investing much more on the U.S. operation. Brewer has high hopes for the much larger U.S. business and sees the potential to help remake the healthcare experience in the U.S.
“Imagine a day when 45% of our Walgreens stores – of the 9,100 stores that happen to be within five miles of 75% of the homes across the United States – where you can walk in and see a primary care physician that’s attached to a Walgreens drugstore,” Brewer said in an interview last month during the Forbes Healthcare Summit.
Walgreens has more about 13,000 retail locations across the U.S., Europe and Latin America.
With just over a month until the Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) said he is increasingly concerned if the Games can go ahead as planned.
“We’re worried,” COC CEO David Shoemaker told the CBC in a New Year’s eve interview. “We’re confident that these Games can still be scheduled safely.
“But we’re taking it day-by-day and wake up every morning to make sure that is how we still feel about it.”
The National Hockey League (NHL) last month said it would not send players to the men’s ice hockey tournament citing the pandemic’s “profound disruption” to its schedule.
As of Saturday the NHL had postponed 90 games for COVID-19 related reasons.
Other winter sports have also experienced disruptions to events that serve as Olympic qualifiers, including alpine skiing, bobsleigh and curling.
Shoemaker said that if the COC believes athlete safety is compromised it will not hesitate to pull the plug on Beijing as it did in March 2020 when they decided not to send a team to the Tokyo Summer Olympics if they were to go ahead as scheduled.
The Tokyo Games were later delayed for one year.
“We have yet to have a conversation with the IOC (International Olympic Committee) about postponement but we’re having conversations on a very frequent basis with the participating winter sport nations and it may well come up,” said Shoemaker.
The greatest concern currently for the COC is getting athletes into the Beijing bubble without testing positive for COVID-19 and face three-to-five weeks quarantine in China.
“Medical experts agree, and the consensus point of view is that it may well be that the safest place from Omicron in February will be the Olympic bubble in Beijing,” said Shoemaker.
“The real challenge for us over the next 30 days is how do we make sure that Canadian participants can get to Beijing without contracting the virus and therefore become able to test negative to get into that scenario.”
France became the sixth country in the world to report more than 10 million COVID-19 infections since the outbreak of the pandemic, according to official data published on Saturday.
French health authorities reported 219,126 new confirmed cases in a 24-hour period, the fourth day in a row that the country has recorded more than 200,000 cases.
France joined the United States, India, Brazil, Britain and Russia in having had more than 10 million cases.
Saturday's figure was the second highest after the 232,200 record on Friday when French President Emmanuel Macron warned the next few weeks would be difficult.
In his New Year's Eve address, Macron did not mention a need for more restrictive health measures than those already announced, adding that the government should refrain from further limiting individual freedoms.
But the government said earlier on Saturday that from Monday wearing masks in public spaces would be mandatory for children as young as six versus 11 before.
And some big cities, including Paris and Lyon, have re-imposed wearing of masks in the street for everyone.
The seven-day moving average of new cases in France, which smoothes out daily reporting irregularities, rose to an all-time high of 157,651 - jumping almost five-fold in a month.
The number of people hospitalised for COVID-19 has increased by 96 over 24 hours, standing at a more than seven-month peak of 18,811. But that figure is still almost half the record 33,497 reached in November 2020.
The COVID-19 death toll increased by 110 over 24 hours to 123,851, the 12th highest globally. The seven-day moving average of new daily deaths has reached 186, a high since May 14.
