How a lack of pharmacies can hurt rural Americans during the pandemic

Good afternoon, readers.

Local pharmacies will be among the most important providers of COVID-19 vaccines as more and more Americans become eligible (and more vaccines are authorized, as Johnson & Johnson’s was this past weekend).

That’s not surprising. Firms such as CVS have long stated their goal is to turn their stores into a “front-door” of health care. You could imagine few moments that call for such a medical delivery model more acutely than the COVID pandemic, which will require more than 70% of Americans to get vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. You can’t rely solely on major health systems in metropolitan areas to make that happen.

And there’s the rub. A new report from the Rural Policy Research Institute finds that many Americans in rural areas face a profound lack of access to the pharmacies which may deliver these front-door services.

According to this analysis (and if you want the full details, just head on over this way), although the majority of rural counties have more than two available qualifying pharmacies that can actually get a COVID shot into your arm, there are more than 100 counties which have no eligible pharmacies at all.

But here’s the gist, as the report authors write: “A significant number of the entities represented in the data will be unlikely to provide vaccination resources because of the nature of their business.”

That may have to do with their individual abilities to provide COVID vaccines, or a lack of partnerships with public health departments, or the generally complex web of private-public partnerships fueling the pandemic response. Whatever the various reasons, the result is the same for millions of rural Americans.

Read on for the day’s news, and see you next week.

Sy Mukherjee
sy.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy

DIGITAL HEALTH

COVID sparked a digital health boom in China, too. My colleagues Grady McGregor and Clay Chandler note that the digital health boom spurred by COVID is in no way restricted to the United States. In China, they write, "between late 2019 and the summer of 2020, the number of new telemedicine providers jumped to nearly 600 from fewer than 150. This encompasses firms like Ping An, whose telehealth arm is now the country's most prodigious digital medicine provider with 67 million monthly active users, and Alibaba Health. The massive conglomerate model common among many Chinese companies has undoubtedly fueled both the competition in this space, and the surging demand in the face of the pandemic. (Fortune)

Apple releases first results from hearing study. Apple's forays into the digital health space hit another milestone on this week as the company, in partnership with the University of Michigan (and a data-sharing collaboration with the World Health Organization), released preliminary results for its Apple Hearing Study. The research is part of Apple and its partners efforts to democratize the collection of health care data by observing and recording real-world experiences such as, say, how someone's environment could affect their hearing health. “One year into the Apple Hearing Study, we’ve generated significant insights into everyday noise exposures and the impacts of those exposures on hearing among our participants. The national scale of this study is unprecedented,” said Rick Neitzel, associate professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, in a statement about the results, which found that 10% of study participants had been diagnosed with hearing loss and three-quarters of those individuals don't take advantage of medical resources that improve hearing health. (Apple)

INDICATIONS

Amgen takes a $1.9 billion bet on Five Prime. Amgen may not be known as a titan of bolt-on acquisitions. But on Thursday, it made a hefty bet on a cancer biotech which has faced skepticism in the past. In a deal valued at $1.9 billion, Amgen is acquiring Five Prime Therapeutics in order to fuel its cancer immunotherapy drug pipeline (a major focus for Amgen). The driving factor behind the deal is Five Prime's experimental bemarituzumab, which is about to begin later-stage studies in a variety of cancers. Amgen's large footprint in the space could bolster those trials.

THE BIG PICTURE

JPM predicts something close to herd immunity by the summer. JPMorgan is out with an analysis suggesting that America could achieve herd immunity (ish) by the summer. The reason? A combination of escalating vaccinations and an increasing percentage of Americans who have already contracted COVID and then formed antibodies (with a heavy emphasis on the former). But the timing here is a bit fraught, as are the numbers. Under the JPM analysis, just over 60% of Americans will either be vaccinated or survivors with antibodies somewhere around July, which is still lower than the threshold of the at least 70% required for herd immunity, according to public health experts. The Biden administration recently announced it expects nearly all American adults will be able to receive a COVID vaccine by May.