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THURSDAY, Nov. 11, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A recall of Ellume at-home COVID-19 test kits has been expanded to include roughly 2 million of the 3.5 million tests that had been shipped to the United States by last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.The original recall, involving 427,000 kits, was first announced in early October due to a "higher than acceptable" rate of false positives. It's a Class I recall — the most serious type — because use of these tests may cause serious adverse health consequences or death, according to the FDA.The recalled kits were made by the Australian company between Feb. 24 and Aug. 11, 2021, and distributed in the United States between April 13 and Aug. 26.The FDA first approved emergency use of the test in December 2020 and...

THURSDAY, Nov. 11, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Health insurance has gotten slightly more expensive during the pandemic: A new survey shows that annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 4%, to an average of $22,221 this year.Of that amount, employees paid an average of nearly $6,000 toward the cost of coverage, while employers paid the remainder of the premium.But there was some good news: The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey of nearly 1,700 small and large companies also showed that there was an increase in workplace health benefits such as mental health services and telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic."In a year when the pandemic continued to cause health and economic disruption, there were only modest changes in the cost of employer-provided health...

THURSDAY, Nov. 11, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- A little after 9 p.m. on a Friday in July, Dr. Kevin Volpp arrived at a restaurant in Cincinnati with his 15-year-old daughter Daphne, her squash coach and some friends. Everyone was tired and eager for a good meal.Daphne was coming off her second long, intense match of the day, with another the next morning. The tournament was important enough to have lured them away from Philadelphia on the 52nd birthday of Marjorie Volpp, Daphne's mom and Kevin's wife.Kevin needed to fuel up because he was 16 days from competing in an Ironman 70.3 event. He'd never done anything like it. But when one of his older daughters suggested it, doing something so challenging – and doing it with her – felt irresistible. By this night, he was...

THURSDAY, Nov. 11, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Since 1971, when the U.S. government made defeating cancer a goal and put major funding behind it, death rates for many cancers have plummeted, but some are increasing, according to a new American Cancer Society report.Death rates for all cancers combined have declined since passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971, according to the report. For example, in 2019, deaths from lung cancer were down 44% from the 1993 peak. But death rates were higher than in 1971 for cancers of the pancreas, esophagus and brain."We are making progress because of increased investment in cancer prevention, in early detection and also improved treatments, but there are still gaps in reducing [death rates]," said senior author Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, a senior vice...