Clover Health Meltdown | Nursing Home Vaccinations | Planet Nine?

Plus: Thundersleet Is A ‘Meteorological Thing’

The special purpose acquisition craze (aka SPAC) is sweeping healthcare. These so-called blank check companies offer a way for companies to go public through a reverse merger—a faster alternative to the traditional IPO process with less dilution and regulatory scrutiny. Last year, former Facebook executive and “SPAC king” Chamath Palihapitiya announced he would take Clover Health public in a deal valuing the company at $3.7 billion. A little more than a month on the public market, the insurance company is facing an army of short-sellers and investigations from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department Of Justice. CEO Vivek Garipalli went on an expletive-ridden tirade on the phone with me on Friday night (read more about it here). 

In other health insurance news, Aetna (which is owned by CVS Health) will re-enter the business of selling individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act for 2022, Forbes senior contributor Bruce Japsen reports. The company left the Obamacare markets four years ago due to the rising costs of uninsured patients signing up for coverage, but there is growing confidence as President Joe Biden has vowed to expand insurance options for Americans. 

Any questions? Send me an email at kjennings@forbes.com.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made nitrile gloves increasingly expensive and difficult to source at any price. There were only 72 million gloves on hand out of a target of 4.5 billion in the U.S. national stockpile as of December. States are left to contend with a wild market rife with shadowy middlemen and black-market brokers, some outright frauds. The frenzy has minted at least four new medical glove billionaires and centimillionaires: Stanley Thai ($1.5 billion, Malaysia), Lim Kuang Sia ($1.2 billion, Malaysia), Somwang Sincharoenkul ($730 million, Thailand) and Wieslaw Zyznowski ($670 million, Poland).

Noteworthy

The doctor appointment scheduler Zocdoc has raised a $150 million funding round as its vaccination scheduling business booms. 

Sleeping fewer than five hours a night is linked to dementia and death in older adults, according to findings from a new study. 

Optum-backed telehealth startup Equip raises $13 million for its eating disorder treatment platform. 

Coronavirus Updates

It’s not just in the U.S.—Covid-19 cases around the world are declining, and in the last week global cases dropped 16%, according to the World Health Organization. This is great news, though many places are still planning to reopen slowly and with plenty of caution. In the U.S., most Americans think that schools should wait to reopen until teachers are vaccinated, according to a new poll. This will hopefully happen in the next several months, and President Biden promised today that there will be enough vaccines for all Americans to get vaccinated by the end of July. 

In other coronavirus news:

Amazon has been sued by the state of New York for failing to protect its workers during the pandemic. 

Federal mask mandates are a step in the right direction, but the requirement to wear masks on transportation may be too little, too late. 

Should people with autoimmune diseases get the Covid-19 vaccine? Here’s what we know. 

Across Forbes

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX Now Worth $74 Billion After Latest Fundraising Round: Report

• Is Eight Enough? New Study Throws Planet Nine Into Doubt, But Can’t Kill It

• Forbes Next 1,000: The Upstart Entrepreneurs Redefining The American Dream

What Else We Are Reading

• Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Growing, and Cases Are More Severe (New York Times)

• Could AI tools for breast cancer worsen disparities? Patchy public data in FDA filings fuel concern (STAT)

• He started a covid-19 vaccine company. Then he hosted a superspreader event. (MIT Technology Review)