Healthcare

More than nine months into the effort to vaccinate Americans against COVID-19, the patchwork nature of vaccination records is keeping Philadelphia hospitals from getting clarity on whether patients have had the shot.

Join host Michael Keegan next week for Special Edition of The Business of Government Hour – COVID-19 and its Impact: a series on how the pandemic has transform government management and operations with guest Dr. Rob Handfield–discussing key steps in building national supply chain immunity.

Julie Swann, an engineer who studies health systems and models infectious disease at North Carolina State University, leads a team of researchers who recently tried to simulate how the Delta variant of the coronavirus could move through schools in various scenarios. The results, which The Washington Post published over the weekend, were alarming.

Eight-year-old Bobby Campbell wanted more than anything to go back to school in person this year. But he’s acutely aware of the importance of masks in reducing COVID’s spread, as his second grade science project last year showed.

Legal battles, like those over vaccination mandates at Indiana University and mask mandates in Texas, Arizona and Utah, are not helping make colleges safer for students as they return to campus.  

As many students in Missouri head back to class this week, some are back in face masks as part of guidance issued by local school districts to slow the spread of COVID-19.

A new study on COVID-19 transmission done by researchers at Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University paints a dire picture for students who go to school unmasked and unvaccinated.

Research studies show that Black patients can be subjected to wait times 30% longer than other patients at doctors' offices and other healthcare facilities, leaving little doubt about the biased nature of healthcare scheduling systems. New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management has identified factors that contribute to this racial disparity and found ways to create parity among all patients.

People tend to overestimate or underestimate risk. The pandemic brings this into stark relief. Picture someone wearing an N95 mask while walking their dog through a deserted park. Contrast that with someone entering a crowded bar maskless in an area with high coronavirus transmission rates.

Faced right now with growing evidence that our vaccines are losing their edge to fight off the highly contagious delta variant, the anxious inoculated are asking: Why wait?