Centene CEO Warns of ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’
The Covid-19 delta variant has changed the environment for health insurance dramatically in just the past week.
Michael Neidorff, the chairman and CEO of Centene—a Clayton, Missouri-based health insurer that focuses on serving low- and moderate-income people and Medicare enrollees—warned about the resurgence of the pandemic during a conference call the company held to go over second-quarter earnings.
The Covid-19 delta variant has changed the environment for health insurance dramatically in just the past week or so, and the variant now is causing a new wave of the pandemic, Neidorff said.
“It’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Neidorff said. “It is clear that one of the issues we must address is vaccine hesitancy, to stop the transmission of this virus and protect those who cannot safely receive the inoculation, including young children.”
An epidemiologist who is advising Centene believes that the delta variant leads to a much higher concentration of the virus in respiratory material than the original strain did, and that an individual infected with the delta strain can spread the virus to five to eight other people, up from an average of 2.4 for individuals infected with the original strain, Neidorff said.
About 83 percent of U.S. Covid-19 cases are now delta variant cases, and the number of hospitalizations increased 57 percent last month, Neidorff said.
“Deaths have increased by 19 percent in the last week alone,” Neidorff added. “And, importantly, 97 percent of people currently hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, and 99.5 percent of the Covid-related deaths are among the unvaccinated.”
Centene has tried to promote the Covid-19 vaccination campaign by calling its members, creating public service announcements that will air on 150 TV stations, and participating in about 80 vaccination events, Neidorff said.
The firm’s epidemiologists are telling it that, if the country fails to use vaccinations to get the delta variant under control, “the next one is even worse,” he added.
Centene is confident about its ability to manage through the pandemic, Neidorff assured the analysts. “But we wanted investors to understand that this is out there,” he said. “It’s not business as usual, as everyone had hoped. We wish everybody was vaccinated.”
From: BenefitsPro