STAT
After years on the rise, the U.S. maternal mortality rate decreased in 2022, new government data show. But maternal health experts warn there’s no reason to celebrate: The dip is a course correction following the Covid-19 pandemic, and mothers in the United States continue to die at dramatically higher rates than mothers in other high-income countries....
WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration is reversing a regulation that had been expected to create shortages of morphine and other opioid injectables, according to a DEA letter to drugmakers obtained by STAT. The DEA dictates the quantity of controlled substances that drug companies are allowed to make. Until this year, those quotas were...
Pandemics start slowly — a few cases here, a few there — until suddenly people are sick or dying everywhere. Early detection by monitoring wastewater can help short-circuit that cycle. It’s difficult to tell what is happening right now with highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 (bird flu), which is rapidly spreading among cows and other mammals....
Three years ago, Moderna, flush with cash from Covid vaccine sales, announced it would start investing in the burgeoning field of gene editing. It created a new division called Moderna Genomics and struck a collaboration with Metagenomi, a new startup specializing in developing new gene-editing enzymes. “This will be a completely new approach for Moderna...
CVS Health got walloped at the outset of 2024 as older adults in its Medicare plans continue to get a lot more medical care than the company expected. CVS’ operating income fell by 34% — roughly $1.2 billion — in the first quarter compared with the prior-year period, according to results released Tuesday. The company, which absorbed the health insurer...
On Wednesday, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty appeared before Congress to answer for what lawmakers called a “single attack [that] kicked off a cascading series of crises that are unmasking some deep vulnerabilities in the core of our health care system”: the February Change Healthcare cyberattack that is still disrupting payment processing across the...