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Walgreens on Wednesday announced it will sell its own generic version of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan, in today's bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Missouri.
- District of Columbia: HHS on Wednesday announced it is suspending funding to EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), an infectious disease research group that has worked on bat coronaviruses in conjunction with China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. HHS cited a series of reporting lapses from EHA on its research and noted it did not adequately monitor the Wuhan Institute's compliance with the terms of an NIH grant that partially funded their work. EHA currently has three active NIH grants totaling $2.6 million from last year, which is funding studies on zoonotic viruses in southeast Asia and the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence. EHA has said it will contest HHS' decision. (Frieden, MedPage Today, 5/15; Bettelheim, Axios, 5/16; Owermohle, STAT, 5/15)
- Illinois: Walgreens on Wednesday announced it will sell its own generic version of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan. The pharmacy chain said that its version of the drug will cost $34.99 for two doses, which is $10 cheaper than the brand-name version. According to Walgreens, its generic drug will be available on store shelves by the end of the month and is already available to purchase online. Priya Mammen, senior medical director at the Walgreens Office of Clinical Integrity, said the company decided to release a lower-priced version of Narcan to increase access. "What I'm hoping as an emergency physician is this just normalizes it," Mammen said. "This is another product that we now just get used to seeing it available to buy, to have, to restock for our own personal first aid kits." (Lovelace Jr., NBC News, 5/15; Constantino, CNBC, 5/15; Kekatos, ABC News, 5/15)
- Missouri: Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the fall and winter were more likely to die than those with influenza. However, the risk of mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients is slowly improving, according to an analysis of data from the Department of Veterans Affairs. For the study, researchers from the VA St. Louis Health Care System looked at data on more than 11,000 patients hospitalized for either COVID-19 or influenza this past fall and winter. They found that 5.7% of patients with COVID-19 died within 30 days of admission compared to 4.24% of patients with influenza. After adjusting for variables, the researchers found the risk of death among people hospitalized with COVID-19 was 35% higher than those hospitalized with the flu. However, the researchers noted that mortality risk among hospitalized COVID-19 patients had dropped compared to the previous 2022–23 season, which found that those hospitalized with COVID-19 were 60% more likely to die than those hospitalized with influenza. (Kahn, MedPage Today, 5/15)
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