Best of December: EUA vaccine wariness | Hospital price transparency | Covid’s global reach

If a scientific survey of 788 representative Americans conducted in July is a reliable bellwether, the country could fall short of getting to the 70% vaccination rate needed to achieve community, or “herd,” immunity.

Official mandates to social distance during the COVID-conscious holidays are going to fall on many a deaf ear if they fail to respect a ubiquitous human impulse at the core of such annual celebrations. 

Analyzing timestamped EHR data from more than 21 million primary care visits in 2017, researchers have ascertained average lengths of visit and other metrics useful to assessing care quality.

Locking down childcare over COVID-19 in a state whose programs serve more than half a million children a day would force 75% of families to work less and 59% to quit a job outright.

The Mayo Clinic has had better outcomes with COVID-19 patients than the national average, achieving a mortality rate of 1.1% vs. approximately 3% for the U.S. as a whole.

Until this week, the least densely populated continent was the only one of the world’s seven that looked like it might escape the COVID crisis unscathed. Now there are none.  

The revised system gives states greater leeway than they’ve had to cut value-based purchasing deals with pharma companies on innovative but expensive drugs.

Is your organization ready to meet the new federal requirements on hospital price transparency? The policy is set to go live on New Year’s Day. 

Media outlets en masse captured the scenes this week when the first round of U.S. residents got inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine.

People tend to perceive themselves as less swayed than others by COVID-19 misinformation, and the gap helps explain why some people are more open than others to governmental interventions.