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The collision of health care and technology. | | | | |  | | By Darius Tahir | | GETTING CARDED: When we talk about vaccine passports, we usually envision a turnkey experience. You can go to a restaurant, board a plane or head to your neighborhood bar and, with a quick flash of an app, enter. But is it really that simple? The reality of vaccine passports can be considerably more complex. As a result, many individuals opt to show their flimsy paper cards from the CDC — or end up cycling through a profusion of available apps. “I have not seen the apps being used much at all,” Eric Topol, a health tech expert at Scripps Research Translational Institute, told us. Folks in other countries are as puzzled as Topol. “Keep showing my US vax card to Germans and they can't believe how fake it looks,” tweeted journalist Michael Hobbes in late January. That we’re here is the natural consequence of a lack of planning. When the Biden administration took office, it convened over two dozen federal agencies to provide input on a vaccine credential system only to backpedal. Now, we’re left with state and private sector initiatives — and, of course, the CDC cards. Future Pulse spoke to friends and colleagues about their vaccine passport experiences. We found some common throughlines: messy apps, having to enter the same information into multiple forms and lots of bureaucratic headaches. Here’s what they had to say:
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Blank Covid-19 vaccination cards are stacked at a pop-up vaccination clinic at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club on Dec. 21, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nev. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images | David Shaywitz, a health technology adviser and author, said he’d had to plod through three apps to gain entrance to three institutions in recent months — and said it reminded him of some familiar foibles of the American health care system’s tech operations: duplicative systems and information that doesn’t follow the patients. “Each time, I need to download a different app (or go to a different webpage), and complete the (basically identical) certification process — some personal info plus uploading image of vax card with my two shots and my booster,” he wrote in an email. “This sort of stuff is achingly familiar to all of us who (STILL) need to fill out the same info on waiting room clipboards time and again.” Others — including our POLITICO colleagues — have had similar treks through the nation’s data systems. “For an upcoming trip to Singapore, it took hours of research for me to figure if I could get a digital confirmation of my vaccination from the city of D.C., where I got my first two shots,” tech editor Heidi Vogt told us. She eventually went through her insurer’s and doctor’s websites to get the digital info she needed. “I got my first two shots in Maryland and my booster in Virginia, so it took a bit for me to get my digital vaccine card. Things are complicated across state lines!” said Future Pulse co-pilot Ben Leonard. But the technology was more convenient in Europe — museums and restaurants scanned the EU’s app conveniently. Some people confess to liking our paper-based card system. “I discovered that although my wallet has always felt just a little cumbersome, it is just big enough to perfectly encase my card without even folding a corner,” agriculture reporter Ximena Bustillo said. “It is truly a rare flex to be able to whip out your pristine, unfolded, unstained vaccine card at each restaurant and public outing.” Maybe our system isn’t so bad — as long as you have a mint-condition card. The rest of us will wait until there’s an app for that. And some of us aren’t waiting happily. “Amazing and pathetic [that] we use these cards when this should all be digitized,” Topol said. Welcome back to Future Pulse, where we explore the convergence of health care and technology. Share your news and feedback: @dariustahir, @samsabin923 , @_BenLeonard_.
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| RECALCULATING COVID HOSPITALIZATIONS: The Biden administration is working to recalculate Covid-19 hospitalizations across the country, according to two senior officials familiar with the matter, POLITICO’s Erin Banco reports. Scientists and data specialists from HHS and the CDC are collaborating with hospitals to bolster Covid-19 reporting. The task force is asking hospitals to differentiate between patients coming in due to Covid-19 and patients coming in for other reasons and later testing positive, the officials said. The goal: get a better sense of the virus’ impact and whether it’s causing severe disease. If hospitalization rates turn out to be lower, it could influence the administration’s views on measures like masking, and more accurate hospitalization figures could better inform the toll on hospitals and what they need amid surges. Eric Topol, a former advisory board member of the Covid Tracking Project, warned the task will be challenging. “You need a panel of experts to review the cases to adjudicate if a hospitalization is for a person who came in for Covid or with Covid,” Topol said. “It's not something that is coded in the chart. A lot of people will say an individual came in with Covid, but it was actually the Covid that exacerbated the lung or heart disease.” The two officials said the project — which gained steam as Omicron tore throughout the country — will likely take several months. ARPA-H HEARING CLOUDED WITH LANDER COMPLAINTS — House lawmakers kicked off a Tuesday hearing on the president’s research agency proposal with talk of their missing guest — and what, if anything, it could mean for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Eric Lander’s late-night resignation following POLITICO reports of staff bullying meant the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing went forward without the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and president’s biggest champion for the proposed $6.5 billion agency. While ARPA-H still has broad bipartisan backing, other witnesses — scientists such John Hopkins Medicine’s Geoffrey Shiu Fei Ling, who previously worked with the Pentagon agency that inspired ARPA-H — fielded questions about where the new health initiative should reside and how to measure its success. The NIH battle continues. A growing number of lawmakers don’t want to see the agency housed at the National Institutes of Health despite many people thinking it was a foregone conclusion last year. That includes Republicans like Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who used Lander’s resignation (from the White House…not NIH) as evidence of bigger problems. “I’m not convinced that a brand-new agency is the answer to or would be able to overcome the institutional, cultural and bureaucratic barriers that are present at our federal scientific agencies,” McMorris Rodgers said. What’s next: Lawmakers are still hammering out details from where the agency resides to how big its budget will be. E&C Health Chair Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) is now working with Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to meld their versions of the proposal.
| | | | DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | SHORTER COVID INCUBATION PERIOD? British researchers found that exposing people to small amounts of the coronavirus caused infections in less than two days on average compared with previous estimates of five to six days, POLITICO Europe’s Helen Collis reports. The study, which used a virus strain circulating early in the pandemic and not the Omicron or Delta variants, analyzed 36 healthy, unvaccinated people between the ages of 18 and 30 who volunteered to be infected by having a small dose of the virus inserted into their nostrils. Half of them got infected, confirmed by two positive PCR tests. Viral load was at its highest about five days after being infected, with the virus spreading from the throat to the nose, which had the highest levels of virus. Research has shown that the now-dominant Omicron variant has an even shorter incubation period than the wild-type coronavirus as well as the Delta variant. Next on the list for the researchers from Imperial College London, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and others: a study with the Delta strain, likely with vaccinated volunteers.
| CNBC breaks down Amazon’s broad telehealth launch. The editor-in-chief of Science says the Biden administration has to regain the scientific community’s confidence in the wake of Eric Lander’s resignation. And STAT says some sufferers of long Covid are finding recovery elusive. | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
