Stride Health Raises $47 Million; Plus, Covid On The Rise In Europe

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November 1 marks the beginning of open enrollment season — the time when individuals can enroll in Obamacare well being plans on Healthcare.gov. Stride Well being simply raised $47 million to assist the one-third of People who work within the gig economic system medical health insurance. The startup focuses on freelancers, part-time staff, impartial contractors, and different gig economic system staff who don’t get medical health insurance advantages by means of an employer, explains Forbes contributor Deb Gordon. Thus far, Stride has enrolled 2.7 million members and likewise companions with corporations that rely closely on gig staff, corresponding to Uber, Amazon, DoorDash, Instacart, and GrubHub, amongst others.

Y Combinator Names Surbhi Sarna Its First-Ever Companion For Healthcare And Biotech

Impressed by the pandemic and up to date portfolio successes together with a number of public corporations and newly minted unicorns, Y Combinator is doubling down on bio startups with its first-ever associate targeted absolutely on this sector. nVision Medical founder and former CEO Surbhi Sarna will function a bunch associate targeted on bio taking the baton from YC managing director Jared Friedman, the previous Scribd cofounder who has overseen YC’s rising bio portfolio in recent times. Learn extra right here.

Noteworthy

Mammoth Biosciences inks $691 million take care of Vertex to develop Crispr gene-editing therapies.

Workit Well being’s cofounders, who’re each in restoration, raised $118 million for his or her digital dependancy remedy startup. 

Well being insurer Centene’s membership grew by greater than 1 million due to a giant improve in enrollment in its Medicaid and Medicare Benefit plans.

The FDA issued a voluntary nationwide recall for sure blood strain drugs manufactured by Lupin Prescription drugs over issues a few cancer-causing impurity. 

CDC sleuths discover supply of lethal melioidosis outbreak in a room spray offered at Walmart.

Coronavirus Updates

According to the World Well being Group, each area on the earth reported declining ranges of Covid-19 instances previously week—apart from Europe, which has seen an 18% leap in new infections. That’s the fourth week in a row that instances have risen in Europe, which public well being officers say can partially be attributed to low vaccination charges in Jap European nations corresponding to Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. By way of gross variety of instances, nevertheless, america nonetheless leads the world with over 513,000 new instances within the final week. That determine represents a 12% drop from final week however continues to be a lot greater than the low level of instances in early summer season. 

Merck Inks Deal To Share Antiviral Covid Tablet With Poorer International locations

Merck introduced it has signed a licensing settlement with the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool to spice up entry to its Covid-19 antiviral tablet in poorer international locations, a landmark deal at odds with the reticence of main vaccine makers to share their know-how. Learn extra right here.

Different Coronavirus Information

TripAdvisor reported that it has moderated over 250,000 feedback associated to Covid-19 since July 2020, and eliminated over 46,000 feedback for violating its insurance policies.

Unvaccinated tennis gamers won’t obtain any particular exemptions for collaborating within the Australian Open in Melbourne subsequent 12 months, says Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews. 

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel believes his firm’s Covid-19 vaccine shall be approved for teenagers within the coming weeks, and for youngsters ages 6 by means of 11 earlier than the tip of the 12 months.

Throughout Forbes

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What Else We’re Studying

Could humans survive on Dune’s Arrakis? (Popular Science)

The COVID pandemic must lead to tuberculosis vaccines (Nature)

How to Map a Fly Brain in 20 Million Easy Steps (The New York Times)