China scrambles to contain ‘strengthening’ virus

The ability of the new coronavirus to spread is strengthening and infections could continue to rise, China’s National Health Commission said on Sunday, with nearly 2,000 people in China infected and 56 killed by the disease.

A handful of cases have been reported outside China, including in Thailand, Australia, the United States and France, with health authorities around the world racing to prevent a pandemic.
The newly-identified coronavirus has created alarm because there are still many unknowns surrounding it, such as how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads between people. It can cause pneumonia, which has been deadly in some cases.
China’s National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei said the incubation period for the virus can range from one to 14 days, and the virus is infectious during incubation, which was not the case with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

SARS was a coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002 and 2003.
“According to recent clinical information, the virus’s ability to spread seems to be getting somewhat stronger,” Ma told a packed media briefing on the second day of the Lunar New Year holiday, adding that knowledge of the virus was limited.
Containment efforts, which have thus far included transportation and travel curbs and the cancellation of big events, will be intensified, Ma said.
The virus, believed to have originated late last year in a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife, has spread to cities including Beijing and Shanghai. Hong Kong has six confirmed cases.

President Xi Jinping said during a politburo meeting on Saturday that China was facing a “grave situation”.
On Sunday, China announced a temporary nationwide ban on the sale of wildlife in markets, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms. Wild and often poached animals packed together in Chinese markets are blamed as incubators for viruses to evolve and jump the species barrier to humans.
Snakes, peacocks, crocodiles and other species can also be found for sale via Taobao, an e-commerce website run by Alibaba.
The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society called on China to make the ban permanent.
The U.S. State Department said it will relocate personnel at its Wuhan consulate to the United States and will offer a limited number of seats to private U.S. citizens on a Jan. 28 flight to San Francisco.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday the government was working with Chinese authorities to arrange a charter flight for any Japanese nationals who wish to return from Wuhan.
The World Health Organization this week stopped short of calling the outbreak a global health emergency, but some health experts question whether China can continue to contain the epidemic.
On Sunday, China confirmed 1,975 cases of patients infected with the new coronavirus as of Jan. 25, while the death toll from the virus has risen to 56, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
No fatalities have been reported outside China.
The outbreak has prompted widening curbs on movements within China, with Wuhan, a city of 11 million, on virtual lockdown, with transports links all-but severed except for emergency vehicles.

CANCELLATIONS AND MISTRUST

Health authorities in Beijing urged people not to shake hands but instead salute using a traditional cupped-hand gesture. The advice was sent in a text message that went out to mobile phone users in the city on Sunday morning.
Beijing also postponed the reopening of the city’s schools and universities after the Lunar New Year holiday, state radio reported. Hong Kong had already delayed the reopening of schools to Feb. 17.
Health officials in Orange County, California, reported that a third case of the virus had been registered in the United States, in a traveler from Wuhan, who was in isolation and in good condition.
On Saturday, Canada declared a first “presumptive” confirmed case in a resident who had returned from Wuhan. Australia confirmed its first four cases.

China has called for transparency in managing the crisis, after a cover-up of the spread of the deadly SARS virus eroded public trust, but officials in Wuhan have been criticized for their handling of the current outbreak.
“People in my hometown all suspect the real infected patients number given by authorities,” said Violet Li, who lives in the Wuhan district where the seafood market is located.
“I go out with a mask twice a day to walk the dog – that’s the only outdoor activity,” she told Reuters by text message.
The outbreak has overshadowed the start of the Lunar New Year, when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel at home and abroad to be with families, with public events canceled and many tourist sites shut.
Overall passenger travel declined by nearly 29 percent on Saturday, the first day of the Lunar New Year, from a year earlier, with air passengers down nearly 42 percent, a transportation ministry official said.
Many cinemas across China are also closed with major film premieres postponed.
Cruise operators including Royal Caribbean Cruises, Costa Cruises, MSC Cruises and Astro Ocean Cruises said that they canceled a combined 12 cruises that had been scheduled to embark from Chinese ports before Feb. 2.
Hong Kong Disneyland and the city’s Ocean Park were closed on Sunday. Shanghai Disneyland, which expected 100,000 visitors daily through the Lunar New Year holidays, has already closed.
Airports around the world have stepped up screening of passengers from China, although some health officials and experts have questioned the effectiveness of these efforts.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health/china-scrambles-to-contain-strengthening-virus-idUSKBN1ZP02B

Supermarkets Close Pharmacy Counters

In some towns, it’s getting harder to pick up your blood-pressure pills with that gallon of milk and rotisserie chicken.
Hundreds of regional grocery stores in cities from Minneapolis to Seattle are closing or selling pharmacy counters, which have been struggling as consumers make fewer trips to fill prescriptions and big drugstore chains tighten their grip on the U.S. market.
Grocery pharmacies are getting hit on several fronts, analysts and the companies say. They are too small to wrest competitive reimbursement rates on drugs, they aren’t connected to big medical networks or insurers, and they generally lack walk-in clinics and other health services that draw many customers to CVS and Walgreens locations.
“Our establishment had a community feel, it wasn’t overly busy so we got to really care for our customers,” said Phillip Breker, who managed a now-closed pharmacy at Lunds & Byerlys, a Minneapolis-area grocery chain. “I also saw the numbers in the back end and how that soured in the last 10 years. The company made the right decision.”
Grocery pharmacies are the latest casualty of industry consolidation that has for years been forcing mom-and-pop drugstores to close. Even some big players have rethought the market. Target Corp. sold off its pharmacy business to CVS Health Corp. five years ago.
Supermarkets have viewed pharmacies as a tool to draw shoppers in. Fueled by easy profits and relatively low startup costs, legions of stores added pharmacy counters in the 1980s and 1990s. Grocery drugstores proliferated to account for roughly 14% of retail pharmacy prescriptions, according to the National Association of Drug Stores.
The number of grocery pharmacies declined for the first time in years in 2017, the latest year for which data is available, to 9,026, down from 9,344 in 2016.
Consumers are increasingly getting 90-day supplies of their medicines or getting prescriptions delivered in the mail. Those trends are resulting in a decline in foot traffic to supermarket pharmacies, which were typically located at the back of stores. Meantime, profits are ever harder to come by as the health-care industry consolidates.
CVS and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., the nation’s biggest players, contributed more than 40% of U.S. prescription revenues in 2018, according to Drug Channels Institute, which provides research on the drug supply chain.
The chains, which now either own or have partnerships with the biggest insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers, are able to secure better deals on drug costs that largely shut out the industry’s smaller players. Pharmacy-benefit managers serve insurers and other clients by choosing which medicines to cover and pushing for lower prices from drugmakers and sellers.
CVS and Walgreens also are working to transform drugstores into health-care hubs, offering services from blood testing to chronic-disease management.
“The biggest companies in health care now have pharmacists and doctors, they own medical practices, and they own urgent-care clinics,” Baird analyst Eric Coldwell said. Grocery pharmacies “have none of this. They have a store to go into to buy lemons and bread.”
The tougher conditions come as the entire drugstore industry copes with a shift to online shopping and shrinking profits in prescription medicines, which often disproportionately affect smaller players.
Walgreens and CVS have closed or are closing more than 300 underperforming stores, while Rite Aid Corp., the No. 3 U.S. chain, is struggling to turn itself around after regulators blocked a merger with Walgreens in 2017.
Raley’s Supermarkets, a West Sacramento, Calif., chain of about 120 stores, last year shut down a third of its roughly 100 pharmacies and transferred prescriptions to nearby Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid stores. Those grocery pharmacies had low prescription rates, were losing money and didn’t merit high operating and labor costs, according to Raley’s.
“There is the benefit of having a pharmacy relative to the grocery-sale lift and the convenience factor of having both in the store, but the economics do not work,” said Keith Knopf, chief executive of Raley’s.
Profitability for grocers has become harder to achieve in recent years, and pharmacies play a less important role today in attracting customers, Mr. Knopf said. Raley’s is cutting hours for the remaining pharmacies to improve profits and create efficiency. Pharmacies make up roughly 20% of Raley’s total sales.
Many grocers still view pharmacies as a key part of their business. Kroger Co., the biggest U.S. supermarket chain, said its pharmacy business is expected to improve this year after lower-than-expected profits in 2019. Kroger has said pharmacy shoppers tend to be more loyal, spending three times as much as nonpharmacy customers.
“We’ve been able to connect the relationship with food and are starting to build out new revenue streams,” Kroger finance chief Gary Millerchip said at an investor meeting in November.
Lunds & Byerlys, the Minnesota chain, shut all 14 of its supermarket pharmacies last year. At each location, it posted a sign that has become increasingly common: “The pharmacy is now closed. Your prescription records have been transferred to Walgreens.”
Mr. Breker, the pharmacy manager, now works for Walgreens at a location in a nearby town. “I literally cried at the counter with dozens of people,” he said. “They felt a loss here.”
https://www.marketscreener.com/CVS-HEALTH-CORPORATION-12230/news/The-Pharmacist-Is-Out-Supermarkets-Close-Pharmacy-Counters-29893604/

How fast can biotech come up with a vaccine for the latest outbreak?

The deadly outbreak of a novel coronavirus has sparked a race among biotech companies, each claiming that its technology can quickly whip up a vaccine to quell a potential crisis. But history suggests the road ahead will be long, unpredictable, and expensive.
Moderna Therapeutics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are among the companies turning their focus to the emerging virus, called 2019-nCoV. Each has received millions in funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global organization that has set an audacious goal: to have a vaccine ready for human testing, a process that traditionally takes years, in just 16 weeks.
“The challenges those efforts face are not insignificant,” said Mark Feinberg, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

He would know. Feinberg was the chief scientific officer of Merck’s vaccine division during the last Ebola outbreak, when the company deployed a vaccine now approved as Ervebo. Preparing the vaccine for human study was a lengthy, cross-border process full of scientific serendipity. And proving its efficacy rested on unpredictable pieces falling into place, including the length of the outbreak.
It was difficult enough for Merck, a multinational company with a $220 billion market cap. Replicating it on a biotech budget is another matter altogether.

“It’s hard to align engaging in this sort of work with the financial realities of a small biotech company,” Feinberg said. “It may sound like an attractive target, but the prospects and the amount of work involved will necessarily take them away from their core business and the interest of their investors in getting a return on their investment.”
Moderna, which has already run clinical trials on six vaccines of its own, believes it’s up to the task.
The company’s technology involves creating synthetic messenger RNA that can compel the body to manufacture specific proteins. For vaccines, that means encoding mRNA to produce antibodies that protect against infection. With CEPI’s funding, Moderna is working with the National Institutes of Health to design such a vaccine for 2019-nCoV. Once it’s ready for human testing, NIH will run the clinical trials.
Dr. Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, committed to getting that done on CEPI’s 16-week timeline. And the company will be able to manufacture the eventual vaccine in a matter of a few months, Zaks said. That should cover clinical trials, he said, but if the vaccine ends up working — and the 2019-nCoV outbreak drags on — the company would have to rely on someone else to churn out the massive number of doses required to halt the virus.
“I don’t kid myself,” Zaks said. “We’re not Sanofi or GSK in terms of global infrastructure and ability to deliver to a global population.”
Inovio’s approach relies on injecting synthetic DNA that codes for protective antibodies, technology developed at the lab of David Weiner of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Like Moderna’s mRNA approach, Inovio’s method doesn’t require administering a live virus and thus should be safer than traditional vaccines. And it promises to be much faster, Weiner said, citing experience.

Good news for the world can be bad news for vaccine development.

In 2015, as the Zika virus raged in South America, Weiner and Inovio went from zero to having a ready-for-testing vaccine in about seven months. “And that is still considered the fastest,” Weiner said.
But that work, later published in the New England Journal of Medicine, never resulted in an approved vaccine, through no fault of Inovio’s. The Zika outbreak dissipated in 2016, sapping the need for a vaccine and making it virtually impossible to run the large-scale trials necessary to prove one’s worth. Good news for the world can be bad news for vaccine development.
The same thing could happen with 2019-nCoV, an outbreak in its infancy. If global health authorities successfully contain the virus, Moderna, Inovio, and the handful of other companies on 2019-nCoV’s case will have no patient population to work with. Or, if one of the candidate vaccines succeeds, global organizations like CEPI might pull their support for other efforts.
There are countless ways vaccine development can go awry in an outbreak, Feinberg said, and what made Merck’s success in Ebola so exemplary is that so many stars aligned to bring it from basic research to clinical trials and finally to regulatory approval.
“Response to this coronavirus will put some of the new partnerships and mechanisms to the test,” Feinberg said. “Will there actually be a need for a vaccine? Or will the outbreak wane? Will there be partners who will stay with you to support the work that’s necessary to bring a vaccine to licensure?”

How fast can biotech come up with a vaccine for the latest outbreak?

NY ‘ready’ to snuff coronavirus on arrival with training, tech, ‘secret shoppers’

It’s inevitable: The coronavirus is without question coming to the nation’s biggest city.

While no one can say exactly when, city officials are already working overtime to stop the virus dead in its tracks upon arrival.

“The risk in New York City is low at this time, while our level of preparedness is very high,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for disease control at the city’s health department, told the Daily News. “We’re making sure all our systems are in place to receive the first patient.”

At JFK Airport, screeners from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are already taking people’s temperatures and asking about symptoms of passengers arriving from central China — where the outbreak began last month in the city of Wuhan.

At public hospitals, staffers are using a recently upgraded intake system to identify and isolate any potential cases. The system uses a series of embedded screen prompts to gather information on travel history and possible recent visits to the Asian epicenter.

Medical staffers walk next to patients waiting to be seen at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, China on Jan. 25, 2020. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

The NYC Health + Hospital system added aggressive new “in-service trainings” in the last week so workers could review protocols and the “donning and doffing” of protective gear such as gloves, gowns, masks and face shields, a spokesman said.

And the city’s health department is lining up staffers with language skills that might prove critical with patients arriving from China.

“I have an entire group that does Hepatitis B work on a day-to-day basis and includes a lot of Mandarin speakers. We’re moving them to be on-call for a scenario where we have someone who’s a Mandarin speaker suspected (of infection),” Daskalakis said.

And then there are the so-called “secret shoppers,” the undercover actors who masquerade as infected patients to constantly test the city’s front-line defenses.

NYC Health + Hospitals staged one of its highest level “secret shopper” drills in December, sending four actors to two hospitals, one ambulatory care center and one post-acute care center.

The undercover patients met with unsuspecting personnel and described symptoms and travel histories consistent with Ebola infection. All four were quickly identified, officials said.

“We were able to meet our overall goals — to identify the patient within 5 to 10 minutes of presentation — and see that the processes we have in place are effective,” said Dr. Syra Madad, senior director of the special pathogens program at NYC Health + Hospitals, to The News.

One of the actors was actually taken to Bellevue Hospital by ambulance and placed in a biocontainment setting, she said.

The other three would have been transported too, but once the proper health department notifications went out, the drill organizers halted the EMS calls, the actors stopped pretending and the transfers to Bellevue were only “simulated,” Madad explained.

“The overall outcome of the exercise was a success,” she told The News. “I think Ebola is the epitome. If you’re prepared for Ebola, you’re ready for anything.”

The city proved its mettle against Ebola in October 2014, after a Harlem doctor contracted the disease while treating patients in West Africa.

Dr. Craig Spencer was rushed to Bellevue in a protective suit by FDNY EMS and was quarantined in one of the hospital isolation units until he recovered.

Spencer was working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, where he was exposed to Ebola.

A Japan Airlines worker (center) wears a face mask while working inside a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 23, 2020 in Los Angeles, Ca. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Private hospitals are getting in on the “secret shopper” action too.

Northwell, the state’s largest health care provider, instituted “just in time” retraining in the last week and plans to send out secret shoppers posing as coronavirus patients “very, very soon,” Dr. Mark Jarrett, the company’s chief quality officer told The News.

“We’ve been planning secret shoppers over the last two days. Once everything in place with retraining, we’ll send them in during the day and on weekends and off-hours too,” he said.

“It’s very important. We’re not doing it to play ‘gotcha.’ It’s not done to be punitive but to help with teaching. If you don’t test, you don’t know,” said Jarrett.

Northwell’s system includes Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan and Long Island Jewish in New Hyde Park, one of the facilities set to receive possible coronavirus cases landing at JFK.

All the preparation is serious business.

When SARS erupted in China in 2002, it infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774 before disappearing thanks to public health measures. In 2012, another virus dubbed MERS began sickening people in Saudi Arabia and killed more than 850 victims.

While the coronavirus death toll remains low, Chinese President Xi Jinping called the situation “grave” on Saturday and imposed further travel restrictions, including banning all group tours. In Hong Kong, where the disease has spread, officials announced that schools will remain closed through Feb. 17, adding two weeks off to a scheduled holiday week.

Symptoms are similar to those of the influenza virus — fever, cough and shortness of breath — and require a medical test to diagnose. Anyone who suspects they might be a carrier should contact their doctor immediately, officials said.

Coronavirus outbreak in China and overseas

Yet New Yorkers out celebrating the Chinese New Year on Saturday expressed little concern about the virus responsible for infecting more than 1,300 people, killing 41 and forcing the quarantine of millions.

“I guess it’s just the New York attitude,” explained Jonathan Chin, 28, of Flushing. “You just try to get through the day, and you don’t really think about anything else other than what you’re doing … You know, we’ve got tunnel vision.”

Others in Manhattan’s Chinese enclave admitted they were on edge and lamented the overlap with celebrations for the Year of the Rat.

Monica Zhong, 15 was wearing a mask and watching fireworks with her friends.

“In China our family members are afraid, the government is telling them to not go out of home and to stay away from everyone. It’s Chinese New Year everyone would gather together but now the government is saying not to.”

She said she wasn’t afraid to go out.

“Not today but in the future yes.”

While minds may be at ease here, hearts are heavy for loved ones in China.

“I’m worried about it,” said Michael Lo, 25, who moved to New York from Hong Kong in 2018. “China does not have a good virus control system. They just let anyone anywhere. It has already spread to Hong Kong. I have friends there, and they are worried.”
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/ny-officials-detail-ways-city-is-preparing-for-coronavirus-20200125-ithoxxpdyfddvbhib4ce4jmpvy-story.html

Using Text To Speech Technology To Assist Dyslexic Students

Davis Graham wanted to participate. His teachers could not understand why he was so resistant to learning. He almost completely gave up on his education. Mr. Graham, a life-long dyslexia advocate, has dyslexia and he was not alone. Eighty percent of children who have a learning disability are also impacted by dyslexia. This is a staggering number of students.

With technology we can tackle some of the challenges facing these students. Even changing how we view these differences.
I asked a friend of mine, Tony Wright, who has two children with dyslexia, what he would change in the world of education. He said we need a change in perception because, “In a perfect world, my children’s learning differences would be accepted as differences, not disabilities. Their peers would understand that they think differently. That they are not inferior. Also, they would be able to be accommodated without disruption to their day. Of course, they have a father who loves reading. I want my kids to enjoy reading. In a perfect world, my kids would be just able to be normal kids and given the chance to excel and succeed in whatever their talent is. I think that’s what most parents want as well.”
With increased early screening we could identify more children who struggle with dyslexia. Early screening could provide a pathway to learning with Text to Speech technology (TTS) and could even lead to a decrease in our total IEP costs. TTS in schools creates an excellent opportunity for a huge impact in schools with very limited budgets.

With regard to how we view reading and writing in education, Mr. Graham points out, “It’s a crossroads. [We should] say look, you can dictate it with speech to text or you can consume it by text to speech or the reading acceleration program.”
The point is the challenges caused by dyslexia in reading and writing can be alleviated. Cost savings for IEPs would be realized in both the short and long-term. Providing students access to TTS technology is the most efficient solution in solving reading challenges that dyslexic students face. In the long-run, districts will see improved comprehension and less frustrating outbursts from students. Very often we see a decrease in the need for assistance from teachers and better test scores often follow. All of these elements combined lead to a positive net impact on students, teachers and schools with limited budgets.

“In the Education delivery system, text to speech will level the hurdles of the printed word in any language, providing a level playing field for all students,” says Mr. Graham.
Despite being severely dyslexic, Mr. Graham went on to receive his Master of Science in Health and Medical Informatics from Brandeis University. When he was diagnosed with dyslexia in the late 60’s, his road to achieving educational success was a long, winding path. With support from many educators along the way, he became passionate about providing access to various content for those who also suffer with dyslexia. Mr. Graham found Bookshare, an ebook library, and began listening to volumes of books converted from a written format to an audio format. This is a life changing experience for someone willing to learn, but who lacks the ability to just sit down and read. Enter the mobile age and the explosion of access to content for those with dyslexia, and we begin to see innovative solutions in solving learning disabilities.
Along with internet access and either a mobile device or tablet, any student with dyslexia can access TTS technology. TTS is not new, but it is dramatically improved over the years.
The increase in processing speed and decrease in costs over time, has allowed for dramatic improvements to TTS technology. Now with programs like Dragon Dictate or Google’s Dictation.io, students can speak into a microphone, or use a dictation feature to “write” papers or take tests.
The problem goes beyond just improving grades
Research by Jean Cheng Gorman, Psy.D., a licensed psychologist who studied youth suicides in 1998, found a staggering 50% of students who unfortunately end their lives have a learning disability, and 40% suffer from dyslexia. There is yet to be a research study showing TTS technology having a causal impact on decreasing suicide. However, helping alleviate barriers to knowledge, while decreasing frustration with learning, will have a positive impact on all student’s lives.
Beyond cost savings, the significance in learning to each student is tremendous. As a child, I personally was slow to read, but I don’t remember when I suddenly “learned” how to read. The act of reading is so automatic for most people, that it is hard for most people to imagine what it would be like to lack the ability to read. Providing solutions to these problems can help make some students feel empowered to learn again. TTS can change the lives of those students who need help with managing dyslexia.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jabezlebret/2019/04/01/using-text-to-speech-technology-to-assist-dyslexic-students/#24d8796224ba

Nearly Half of U.S. Smokers Not Advised by Doctors to Quit

Too few American smokers are advised by their doctors to quit, according to a report released Thursday by U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, M.D.
“Forty percent of smokers don’t get advised to quit,” Adams told The New York Times. “That was a shocking statistic to me, and it’s a little embarrassing as a health professional.”
According to the report, “four out of every nine adult cigarette smokers who saw a health professional during the past year did not receive advice to quit.” The report advised smokers to use a number of cessation methods known to be effective but noted that electronic cigarettes are not among those, The Times reported.

Vulnerable populations — including gay and transgender people, Native Americans, and people with mental illness — are not getting the help they need to quit smoking, according to the Surgeon General’s report. It said doctors and public health officials need to do more to help these groups stop smoking.
“The biggest take-home from this report is that far too many people who want to quit aren’t getting access to the cessation treatments that we know work,” Adams told The Times.
Office of the Surgeon General
https://www.physiciansbriefing.com/cardiology-2/smoking-cessation-news-628/nearly-half-of-u-s-smokers-not-advised-by-doctors-to-quit-754241.html

Health Care Utilization Up for Seniors With Untreated Apnea

Older adult Medicare beneficiaries with untreated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have increased health care utilization (HCU) and costs, according to a study published online Jan. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
Emerson M. Wickwire, Ph.D., from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues examined the effect of untreated OSA on HCU and costs among a nationally representative 5 percent sample of Medicare administrative claims data for 2006 to 2013. Data were included for 287,191 patients, including 10,317 beneficiaries with OSA and 276,874 control patients.
The researchers found that during the year prior to OSA diagnosis, beneficiaries with OSA demonstrated increased HCU and higher mean total annual costs (adjusted marginal effect, $19,566) compared with matched control patients as well as higher mean annual costs across all individual points of service. Inpatient care correlated with the highest incremental costs and prescriptions correlated with the lowest incremental costs ($15,482 and $431 greater than control patients, respectively).

“These results are generally consistent with and add a population health perspective to previous literature, thus highlighting the clinical and economic importance of OSA specifically among older adults,” the authors write. “Future research should seek to understand the effect of comorbid OSA as well as evaluate the economic effect of OSA treatments among older adults.”
One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required)
Editorial (subscription or payment may be required)
https://www.physiciansbriefing.com/pulmonology-17/apnea-sleep-problems-news-624/health-care-utilization-up-for-seniors-with-untreated-apnea-754051.html