The latest No one knows more about long covid than the people suffering from it. More than two years into the pandemic, those patients are helping revolutionize research to find treatments for the fatigue, brain fog and other debilitating symptoms associated with long covid. They are documenting their symptoms in real time and helping to come up with questions and strategies for surveys that shape how scientists investigate the new medical condition. Federal regulators last week said people 50 and older can get a second booster, but stopped short of recommending that they do so. That new policy has left many wondering whether they should get a second booster now, later in the year, or at all. The cloudy guidance has even left some doctors unsure how to advise patients. Lawmakers have settled on a $10 billion covid funding deal that cuts global aid to boost vaccinations in developing nations. The agreement is a blow to the Biden administration, which had asked for more than double that sum, emphasizing the importance of supporting worldwide efforts to slow the virus's spread and prevent the emergence of new variants. Still, the deal allows the federal government to begin purchasing additional vaccines, tests and treatments to prepare the United States for the next possible surge in cases. My colleague Amy Goldstein reports that Medicare started Monday to pay for at-home coronavirus tests, marking the first time the federal insurance system for older and disabled Americans has picked up the bill for any type of over-the-counter medical test. Under the new rules, the program is covering as many as eight rapid tests a month for the 59 million people who have Medicare insurance for care outside hospitals – known as Part B. Customers will get the free tests at participating national pharmacy chains, including CVS and Walmart. The move comes after lawmakers and advocates for older Americans complained that Medicare recipients – some of whom are especially vulnerable to the virus – still had to pay for rapid tests even after the Biden administration required other insurers to cover the cost. A committee of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to meet Wednesday to debate the long-term booster strategy in the United States. This won't be like past meetings, my colleague Carolyn Y. Johnson reports, where the experts voted to recommend that a specific vaccine should receive the greenlight. Instead, they'll be debating when, how and whether to modify boosters to fight future variants. The current vaccines are still programmed against the original "prototype" version of the coronavirus that was circulating in early 2020. That has remained remarkably effective against hospitalization and death caused by a slew of variants, though protection wanes over time. The annual flu shot is picked through an international process, and part of what experts will debate Wednesday is how closely coronavirus boosters will follow that model. Drug company executives have predicted that the next booster shot might be a "bivalent" shot, containing two different variants and given alongside the annual influenza shot. But the data showing such shots provide better protection remains to be seen, and the many uncertainties about the coronavirus – which hasn't yet settled into a clear seasonal pattern like flu – will make these deliberations challenging. Other important news Teens had been struggling with mental health long before the pandemic. Norman "Ned" Sharpless, the director of the National Cancer Institute, announced that he is stepping down at the end of April, following an exhausting, but gratifying two years leading NCI as it assisted with the government's pandemic response. "My time in government," he said, "should be measured in dog years." The risk of cardiac complications — including myocarditis, a condition caused by inflammation of the heart muscle — was much more common in people who had covid than in those who received an mRNA vaccine, according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week. | 
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