Overnight Health Care — Biden looks to jumpstart cancer moonshot

View in your browser OVERNIGHT POLICY: Health Care Biden looks to jumpstart cancer moonshot © AP Photo/Alex Brandon Welcome to Wednesday’s Overnight Health Care, where we’re following the latest moves on policy and news affecting your health. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.  Today is Groundhog Day, which is maybe fitting in year two of the pandemic.     The cancer moonshot, which President Biden worked on as vice president, is getting reinvigorated. We'll also look at a new World Health Organization warning on pandemic restrictions.   For The Hill, we’re Peter Sullivan (psullivan@thehill.com) and Nathaniel Weixel (nweixel@thehill.com). Write to us with tips and feedback, and follow us on Twitter: @PeterSullivan4 and @NateWeixel  Let’s get started.  Biden: 'Let's end cancer as we know it' © Greg Nash President Biden on Wednesday called the “cancer moonshot” initiative a priority of his White House during an event announcing the relaunch of the program.  “Let there be no doubt. Now that I am president, this is a presidential White House priority — period,” he said during remarks at the White House.  He called the relaunch a “supercharge” of the cancer moonshot and an essential effort of his administration. The program is personal for Biden and launched while he was vice president after his son Beau Biden died of glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, in 2015 at the age of 46.  Details: The initiative is focused on efforts to diagnose cancer sooner by increasing access to ways to screen for cancer, with a focus on equity and addressing inequities across race and region.   Biden argued on Wednesday that there is too little known about why treatments work for some patients but not for others with the same diagnosis. And he argued that patients usually want to share their data to help others.   He issued an official call to action, asking those who missed their screenings during the COVID-19 pandemic to go and get a screening. There were more than 9.5 million missed cancer screenings in the U.S. as a result of the pandemic, according to the White House.  Read more here.  WHO warns nations about lifting restrictions © Getty Images The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned countries against lifting their COVID-19 restrictions, saying the “virus is dangerous, and it continues to evolve before our very eyes.”  “We're concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines, and because of omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity, preventing transmission is no longer possible and no longer necessary,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing on Tuesday.  “Nothing could be further from the truth. More transmission means more disease,” he continued.  Tedros said he did not believe that nations needed to return to lockdowns to curb further spread of the COVID-19 pandemic amid the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, but he said that nations could not rely on vaccination alone to solve the pandemic.  “It's premature for any country either to surrender or to declare victory,” he said, noting that the WHO was currently tracking four sub-lineages of the omicron variant alone.  “We call on countries to continue testing, surveillance and sequencing. We can't fight this virus if we don't know what it's doing,” he said. “And we must continue to work to ensure all people have access to vaccines.”  Read more here.   ARMY TO START DISMISSING UNVACCINATED SOLDIERS The Army announced on Wednesday that will begin separating soldiers who are not vaccinated against COVID-19.  Under a directive issued by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, commanders will begin involuntary administrative separations for soldiers who have refused to be vaccinated and don’t have a pending or approved exemption request.  “Army readiness depends on Soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars,” Wormuth said in a statement. “Unvaccinated Soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness.”  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated vaccinations for the military in late August but left it up to each service to implement its own deadlines.   The Army gave active-duty soldiers until Dec. 15 to comply with the mandate, but Reservists and Army National Guard members still have until June 30 to be fully vaccinated.  As of Wednesday, service had yet to involuntary separate any soldiers solely for refusing the vaccine.  The Army has relieved six active-duty leaders — including two battalion commanders — for not complying with the mandate. It has also issued 3,073 written reprimands to soldiers who are not in compliance.  Read more here.   Doctors call cancer patients cured © iStock, The Hill photo illustration In a study published Wednesday, doctors from the University of Pennsylvania said cancer in two patients is not detectable more than a decade after a treatment known as CAR T cell therapy.  An early trial of the CAR T treatment was conducted in 2010 on three patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The therapy removes the white blood cells that fight viruses from a patient's body to genetically engineer them to fight cancer before infusing them back into the patient’s circulation, The New York Times reported.   “We thought they would be gone in a month or two,” Carl June, the trial's principal investigator, told the Times of the cells used in the treatment.  But on Wednesday, June, along with J. Joseph Melenhorst and David Porter, published a report in Nature saying that the cancer in two of the patients in the trial was gone, and the CAR T cells were still in their bloodstreams.  “CAR T cells remained detectable more than ten years after infusion, with sustained remission in both patients,” the report said.  “I’m doing great right now. I’m still very active. I was running half marathons until 2018,” 75-year-old Doug Olson, one of the patients in the trial, told The Associated Press. “This is a cure. And they don’t use the word lightly.”  Read more here.   COVID-19 DEATHS IN BRITAIN HIGHEST IN ALMOST A YEAR British health officials have reported the country's highest daily COVID-19 death total in almost a year, Reuters reported.   Health officials said that on Wednesday 534 people died within a 28-day span of testing positive for COVID-19, per the wire service.  The reported deaths are the highest daily total since February 2021, according to Reuters.  According to data from the British government, 88,085 new virus cases were also recorded on Wednesday, the wire service reported.  This comes as countries around the world continue to deal with a surge of COVID-19 infections driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized on Monday after a report on the gatherings he held on government property amid the ongoing pandemic found multiple "failures of leadership and judgment."  Read more here.   WHAT WE'RE READING U.S. Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries (New York Times)  British COVID trial deliberately infecting young adults found to be safe (Reuters)  Despite Biden’s big promises and a far better understanding of the virus, Covid-19 is still raging through the nation’s prisons (Stat)   STATE BY STATE Disabled Texas students say mask mandate ban keeps them out of school (Bloomberg)   CA no longer letting health care staff with COVID go back to work without isolation (KTLA)  Army medical team arrives at Abbott Northwestern to aid with COVID response (CBS Minnesota) OP-EDS IN THE HILL Biden Alzheimer's policy will deepen socioeconomic inequities  That's it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill's health care page for the latest news and coverage. See you tomorrow. Sign Up for Health Care Forward Health Care Privacy Policy  |   Manage Subscriptions  |   Unsubscribe Email to a friend  |   Sign Up for Other Newsletters The Hill 1625 K Street, NW 9th Floor, Washington DC 20006 © 1998 - 2022 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved.

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