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FRIDAY, April 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The COVID-19 coronavirus has saturated the United States, and it appears to be spreading quickly in some places that are planning to ease social distancing restrictions soon, a new study shows. County-level data shows COVID-19 cases in all 306 "hospital referral regions" in the United States, the areas where people go for hospital or specialist care, said study leader Dr. Elliott Fisher, a professor of health policy and medicine at The Dartmouth Institute in Lebanon, N.H. "We need to be aware that this epidemic is far from over. The number of cases in every region today are higher than they were a week ago," said Fisher. "We have no place in the country where there are not cases being reported within a region." The data also show that...

FRIDAY, April 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. House passed a $484 billion deal on Thursday that would replenish a small business loan program that has run out of funding. The bill also directs more money to hospitals and COVID-19 testing. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday, the Washington Post reported. As of Friday, U.S. coronavirus cases passed 867,000, including almost 45,000 deaths. The legislation passed Thursday would add $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, the Post reported. It would also boost a separate small business emergency grant and loan program by $60 billion, and direct $75 billion to hospitals and $25 billion to a new coronavirus testing program. Passage of the stimulus package might take some of the sting out...

THURSDAY, April 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Accelerated approval has been granted to Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) to treat patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who have received at least two previous therapies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. Approval of Trodelvy, a Trop-2-directed antibody and topoisomerase inhibitor drug conjugate, was based on clinical trial data from 108 breast cancer patients with metastatic triple-negative disease. Researchers found an overall response rate of 33.3 percent and a median response duration of 7.7 months. Response was maintained for six months or longer in 55.6 percent of patients who responded, and 16.7 percent of those who responded maintained response for one year or longer. A Boxed Warning...

THURSDAY, April 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Seniors hospitalized with pneumonia are much more likely to die in the hospital and within two years of leaving the hospital than those with hip fractures, new research shows. But many older people don't recognize the serious threat posed by pneumonia, the researchers said. The study took place in 2009 to 2015, years before the coronavirus pandemic and its respiratory effects became a well-known threat to human life. For the study, the investigators compared outcomes among patients in France, aged 80 and older, who were hospitalized for either pneumonia (nearly 12,200) or hip fractures (nearly 4,800). The pneumonia patients had a greater number of other health problems ("co-morbidities") and a higher in-hospital death rate than the hip...