China’s cabinet on Thursday told firms to resume production of key medical goods for virus controls, amid widespread shortages.
Local governments are responsible for ensuring that local enterprises
maintain the supply of protective clothing, face masks, goggles,
ambulances and drugs, the State Council said in a statement.
The cabinet said it will be responsible for unified allocation of
medical goods and local governments cannot intercept or transfer them.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-medicalgoods/china-tells-firms-to-resume-production-of-medical-goods-for-virus-control-idUSKBN1ZT1H9
Thursday, January 30, 2020
China: Chinese nationals who are family members of foreigners can exit Wuhan
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Chinese nationals who
are family members of foreign citizens can board evacuation flights from
Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, if they wish.
“For family members of Chinese citizens of foreign nationals in Wuhan, taking into account family factors, if they wish, they can leave with their families,” the ministry said in a short statement sent to Reuters.
A number of countries have already or are planning to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, which the government has put under a virtual lockdown to control the virus, including the United States, Japan and Britain.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-foreigners/china-says-chinese-nationals-who-are-family-members-of-foreigners-can-fly-out-of-wuhan-idUSKBN1ZT22S
“For family members of Chinese citizens of foreign nationals in Wuhan, taking into account family factors, if they wish, they can leave with their families,” the ministry said in a short statement sent to Reuters.
A number of countries have already or are planning to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, which the government has put under a virtual lockdown to control the virus, including the United States, Japan and Britain.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-foreigners/china-says-chinese-nationals-who-are-family-members-of-foreigners-can-fly-out-of-wuhan-idUSKBN1ZT22S
If you feel you can’t breathe, don’t expect virtual assistants to call for help
Virtual digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google
Assistant could potentially provide users with reliable and relevant
information during medical emergencies, but their current incarnations
aren’t quite up to the job, a new study suggests.
In an experiment, the four leading virtual digital assistants (VDAs) were queried aloud about first aid for a range of health situations. Even when the virtual assistant understood the question, the answers were often off the mark, researchers report in BMJ Innovations.
The technology is promising and improvements are being made daily, said coauthor Matthew Douma of the department of critical care medicine at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
“The greatest potential would be for an elderly person who fell and is on the floor,” Douma said. “If they can speak out loud they could get help.”
Unfortunately, Douma said, the VDAs provided lifesaving information only about half of the time. Worse, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana often were unable to parse the words that were spoken to them.
When contacted for comment, Google, Microsoft and Amazon responded, noting that they strove to provide the best information possible. Microsoft and Amazon suggested the new study might spark improvements in their VDAs.
“The safety of our users is extremely important to us and we will evaluate the study and its findings and continue to inform our products from a number of valuable sources, Courtney Gehring, a spokesperson for Microsoft, said in an email.
“We’re always working to make Alexa more helpful for customers,” Shelby Delano a spokesperson for Amazon said in an email. “The ways customers want to use Alexa continue to evolve and we’ll continue to take customer feedback into account for our products and services.”
Google took a different tack. “Google Assistant was not designed for medical emergencies and we encourage people to use traditional emergency response channels,” Christina Peck, a spokesperson for Google said in an email.
Apple did not respond to a request for comments.
In the study, while Alexa and Google Assistant understood more than 90% of the queries, their advice, when compared to recommendations from the Canadian Red Cross Comprehensive Guide for First Aid, often fell short. Google Assistant’s advice agreed with the guide 56% of the time, while Alexa was on the money just 19% of the time.
Douma gives a striking example. “One trigger we used was ‘Google, I can’t breathe,’” he said. “And it would play the Faith Hill song ‘Breathe.’”
Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana fared worse, correctly parsing the queries just 17% and 5% of the time respectively.
One bright spot: All the VDAs recommended calling emergency services if the user said “I’m having a heart attack.”
Douma and his colleagues put the four VDAs to the test in March 2018. They queried the virtual assistants on 39 first aid topics ranging from nausea and vomiting to penetrating chest trauma.
The VDAs were prompted by remarks such as: “How do I know if someone is having a heart attack?” “What do I do for someone who is having a heart attack?” and “I’m having a heart attack.”
While the virtual assistants may have improved somewhat since the study was done in 2018, Douma ran an impromptu test of one of them for Reuters Health, saying “Alexa, I can’t breathe.” Alexa’s response: “Take deep breaths.”
The correct response would have been to alert the user to the fact that this could be an emergency situation and suggesting a call to 911 for help, Douma said.
Dr. Leonard Weiss agrees that VDAs have a lot of potential for helping people in a medical emergency and he hopes that feedback like the current study may spur companies to improve their products.
“But right now, as this study shows, they are not ready,” said Weiss,
an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of
Pittsburgh. “The companies need to collaborate with emergency medicine
professionals to develop libraries and the technology needs to be
developed so that 911 will be called in an emergency.”
While it’s good that the VDAs instructed people with heart attack symptoms to call 911, it would be better if they also offered advice on what to do while waiting for the ambulance, Weiss said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/3aStc5D BMJ Innovations, online January 7, 2020.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-emergencies-digital-assistants/if-you-feel-you-cant-breathe-dont-expect-virtual-assistants-to-call-for-help-idUSKBN1ZT2XW
In an experiment, the four leading virtual digital assistants (VDAs) were queried aloud about first aid for a range of health situations. Even when the virtual assistant understood the question, the answers were often off the mark, researchers report in BMJ Innovations.
The technology is promising and improvements are being made daily, said coauthor Matthew Douma of the department of critical care medicine at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
“The greatest potential would be for an elderly person who fell and is on the floor,” Douma said. “If they can speak out loud they could get help.”
Unfortunately, Douma said, the VDAs provided lifesaving information only about half of the time. Worse, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana often were unable to parse the words that were spoken to them.
When contacted for comment, Google, Microsoft and Amazon responded, noting that they strove to provide the best information possible. Microsoft and Amazon suggested the new study might spark improvements in their VDAs.
“The safety of our users is extremely important to us and we will evaluate the study and its findings and continue to inform our products from a number of valuable sources, Courtney Gehring, a spokesperson for Microsoft, said in an email.
“We’re always working to make Alexa more helpful for customers,” Shelby Delano a spokesperson for Amazon said in an email. “The ways customers want to use Alexa continue to evolve and we’ll continue to take customer feedback into account for our products and services.”
Google took a different tack. “Google Assistant was not designed for medical emergencies and we encourage people to use traditional emergency response channels,” Christina Peck, a spokesperson for Google said in an email.
Apple did not respond to a request for comments.
In the study, while Alexa and Google Assistant understood more than 90% of the queries, their advice, when compared to recommendations from the Canadian Red Cross Comprehensive Guide for First Aid, often fell short. Google Assistant’s advice agreed with the guide 56% of the time, while Alexa was on the money just 19% of the time.
Douma gives a striking example. “One trigger we used was ‘Google, I can’t breathe,’” he said. “And it would play the Faith Hill song ‘Breathe.’”
Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana fared worse, correctly parsing the queries just 17% and 5% of the time respectively.
One bright spot: All the VDAs recommended calling emergency services if the user said “I’m having a heart attack.”
Douma and his colleagues put the four VDAs to the test in March 2018. They queried the virtual assistants on 39 first aid topics ranging from nausea and vomiting to penetrating chest trauma.
The VDAs were prompted by remarks such as: “How do I know if someone is having a heart attack?” “What do I do for someone who is having a heart attack?” and “I’m having a heart attack.”
While the virtual assistants may have improved somewhat since the study was done in 2018, Douma ran an impromptu test of one of them for Reuters Health, saying “Alexa, I can’t breathe.” Alexa’s response: “Take deep breaths.”
The correct response would have been to alert the user to the fact that this could be an emergency situation and suggesting a call to 911 for help, Douma said.
Dr. Leonard Weiss agrees that VDAs have a lot of potential for helping people in a medical emergency and he hopes that feedback like the current study may spur companies to improve their products.
While it’s good that the VDAs instructed people with heart attack symptoms to call 911, it would be better if they also offered advice on what to do while waiting for the ambulance, Weiss said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/3aStc5D BMJ Innovations, online January 7, 2020.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-emergencies-digital-assistants/if-you-feel-you-cant-breathe-dont-expect-virtual-assistants-to-call-for-help-idUSKBN1ZT2XW
Trump admin to try letting states limit Medicaid benefits
The Trump administration on Thursday said it will test allowing state
Medicaid programs to limit health benefits and prescription drug
coverage for some patients in return for changing how federal government
contributions to the states are made.
Medicaid plans currently pay for most prescription drugs. The new approach would align their coverage with that of many private health plans and Medicare prescription drug plans that typically use the threat of excluding a drug from coverage to seek lower prices from manufacturers.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said states would have to opt into the Healthy Adult Opportunity program. It said patients eligible for the program would be limited to adult beneficiaries under age 65 who are not eligible on the basis of a disability or their need for long-term care.
The program is primarily targeted at the roughly one-fifth of Medicaid patients who received health coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion program since 2014, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said.
The program would require states to commit in advance to either a total Medicaid spending figure or a per capita spending amount in order to receive federal money, a change from the current method in which the federal government reimburses states for a percentage of actual spending, and one that could run into legal challenges.
Much like private health insurers, participating states would be able to create a formulary of covered drugs, which allows them to give a drugmakers’ medicine priority in exchange for lower prices. There are special protections for drugs that treat HIV and behavioral health conditions.
“This is an opportunity for states to have greater negotiating power with manufacturers,” Verma said on a conference call with reporters.
States participating in the program will be required to report key quality metrics to CMS.
There are more than 71 million people currently covered under Medicaid, an important social safety net program created five decades ago and expanded by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama through the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare.
Evercore ISI analyst Michael Newshel said the program could be in
violation of Federal law, which requires Medicaid funding to be open
ended.
“Any capped funding arrangement will most likely be overturned in court,” Newshel wrote in a research note.
Americans’ healthcare coverage has been a central issue in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats have been critical of programs like the one being proposed by the administration.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-medicaid/trump-admin-to-try-letting-states-limit-medicaid-benefits-idUSKBN1ZT1ZZ
Medicaid plans currently pay for most prescription drugs. The new approach would align their coverage with that of many private health plans and Medicare prescription drug plans that typically use the threat of excluding a drug from coverage to seek lower prices from manufacturers.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said states would have to opt into the Healthy Adult Opportunity program. It said patients eligible for the program would be limited to adult beneficiaries under age 65 who are not eligible on the basis of a disability or their need for long-term care.
The program is primarily targeted at the roughly one-fifth of Medicaid patients who received health coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion program since 2014, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said.
The program would require states to commit in advance to either a total Medicaid spending figure or a per capita spending amount in order to receive federal money, a change from the current method in which the federal government reimburses states for a percentage of actual spending, and one that could run into legal challenges.
Much like private health insurers, participating states would be able to create a formulary of covered drugs, which allows them to give a drugmakers’ medicine priority in exchange for lower prices. There are special protections for drugs that treat HIV and behavioral health conditions.
“This is an opportunity for states to have greater negotiating power with manufacturers,” Verma said on a conference call with reporters.
States participating in the program will be required to report key quality metrics to CMS.
There are more than 71 million people currently covered under Medicaid, an important social safety net program created five decades ago and expanded by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama through the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare.
“Any capped funding arrangement will most likely be overturned in court,” Newshel wrote in a research note.
Americans’ healthcare coverage has been a central issue in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats have been critical of programs like the one being proposed by the administration.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-medicaid/trump-admin-to-try-letting-states-limit-medicaid-benefits-idUSKBN1ZT1ZZ
EPA reaffirms that glyphosate does not cause cancer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it finished
a regulatory review that found glyphosate, the most widely used weed
killer in the United States, is not a carcinogen.
The conclusion reaffirms the agency’s stance on glyphosate, the key ingredient in Bayer AG’s Roundup, despite judgments by U.S. juries that have found that use of the weedkiller was responsible for plaintiffs’ cancer in some trials.
“EPA has concluded that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used according to the label and that it is not a carcinogen,” the agency said in a statement.
The EPA judgment could help bolster the case for Bayer as it faces thousands more lawsuits from Roundup users who allege it caused their cancer.
Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, welcomed the findings. The company has maintained glyphosate and Roundup are safe and not carcinogenic.
Farmers spray glyphosate on fields of soybeans and other crops. Roundup is also used on lawns, golf courses and elsewhere.
“Glyphosate-based herbicides are one of the most thoroughly studied products of their kind, which is a major reason why farmers around the world continue to rely on these products,” said Liam Condon, Bayer’s global president for crop science.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Bayer said last Friday it reached an agreement with plaintiffs’ lawyers to postpone a Missouri jury trial over allegations Roundup causes cancer to provide time for negotiations to settle the litigation.
Three consecutive juries previously found Bayer liable for causing cancer with damages of tens of millions of dollars awarded to each plaintiff. The company is appealing those verdicts.
“This administration’s troubling allegiance to Bayer/Monsanto and the
pesticide industry doesn’t change the trove of peer-reviewed research
by leading scientists finding troubling links between glyphosate and
cancer,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of environmental health for the
Center for Biological Diversity.
Bayer is considering stopping sales of glyphosate to private users who apply it in their gardens as part of settlement talks with U.S. plaintiffs, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-epa/u-s-epa-reaffirms-that-glyphosate-does-not-cause-cancer-idUSKBN1ZT2SB
The conclusion reaffirms the agency’s stance on glyphosate, the key ingredient in Bayer AG’s Roundup, despite judgments by U.S. juries that have found that use of the weedkiller was responsible for plaintiffs’ cancer in some trials.
“EPA has concluded that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used according to the label and that it is not a carcinogen,” the agency said in a statement.
The EPA judgment could help bolster the case for Bayer as it faces thousands more lawsuits from Roundup users who allege it caused their cancer.
Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, welcomed the findings. The company has maintained glyphosate and Roundup are safe and not carcinogenic.
Farmers spray glyphosate on fields of soybeans and other crops. Roundup is also used on lawns, golf courses and elsewhere.
“Glyphosate-based herbicides are one of the most thoroughly studied products of their kind, which is a major reason why farmers around the world continue to rely on these products,” said Liam Condon, Bayer’s global president for crop science.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Bayer said last Friday it reached an agreement with plaintiffs’ lawyers to postpone a Missouri jury trial over allegations Roundup causes cancer to provide time for negotiations to settle the litigation.
Three consecutive juries previously found Bayer liable for causing cancer with damages of tens of millions of dollars awarded to each plaintiff. The company is appealing those verdicts.
Bayer is considering stopping sales of glyphosate to private users who apply it in their gardens as part of settlement talks with U.S. plaintiffs, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-epa/u-s-epa-reaffirms-that-glyphosate-does-not-cause-cancer-idUSKBN1ZT2SB
Ominous Data Emerge About Early Coronavirus Transmission
Human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus was occurring
since mid-December 2019 in China, with the outbreak initially doubling
in size every week, researchers found.
Based on the first 425 cases with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia, the epidemic appeared to double in size every 7.4 days in its earliest stages, with a basic reproductive number estimated at 2.2, reported Zijian Feng, M. Med, of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, and colleagues.
In addition, mean incubation period was about five days, with the 95th percentile at 12.5 days, the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Considerable efforts to reduce transmission will be required to control outbreaks if similar dynamics apply elsewhere,” they noted.
Interestingly, the authors noted that while over half of those cases were linked to exposure to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market, the widely reported source of the outbreak in the earliest days of the virus, “it is now clear that human-to-human transmission is occurring and that the epidemic has been gradually growing in recent weeks.”
Human-to-human transmission of novel coronavirus outside China is on the minds of the international community, particularly as the World Health Organization convenes its emergency committee on Thursday to decide whether the outbreak constitutes an international health emergency. Reuters reported a fifth case of novel coronavirus in France late Wednesday, in the daughter of a man, age 80, who was hospitalized with the disease.
But the reproductive number — the average number of people who will contract the virus from one infected person — is also of considerable interest, as it determines how efficiently the virus can transmit among the population. Based on their data, Feng and colleagues estimated a basic reproductive number for novel coronavirus of 2.2 (95% CI 1.4-3.9), which falls into the widely reported “between 1.5 and 3” basic reproductive number for the virus.
This would put novel coronavirus on par with the 2014 Ebola West Africa outbreak, whose basic reproductive number was 2, but far below measles, which ranges from 12-18.
“We’re still learning a lot about the transmission of the virus, so the reproductive number is going to change rapidly,” Amesh Adalja, MD, spokesperson, Infectious Diseases Society of America, told MedPage Today, speaking in general about the reproductive number of the virus.
Adalja also cautioned against putting a lot of emphasis into the reproductive number or using it as “a special magic number that applies to all situations,” because each patient has his or her own reproductive number.
“If you isolate a patient and they don’t transmit the virus to anybody, then their reproductive number is zero,” he said.
Feng and colleagues examined data from the first 425 laboratory-confirmed cases of patients with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia up through Jan. 22. Median age of patients was 59, though they ranged from age 15-89, and 56% were men. There were no cases in children younger than age 15, the authors said. Estimates of the epidemic growth rate were calculated from cases with symptom onset from Dec. 10 to Jan. 4.
Based on exposure data among ten confirmed cases, researchers
estimated the mean incubation period was 5.2 days. Duration from illness
onset until first medical visit for ill patients was about six days
prior to Jan. 1, and down to about 4.5 days during Jan. 1-11.
On the U.S. front, CDC’s daily briefing Wednesday afternoon revealed no new cases in the U.S. So far, there are 165 persons under investigation, and 68 of those have tested negative. CDC officials also said that they have evacuated 195 U.S. citizens from Wuhan, who are now on U.S. soil, as reported by the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services earlier on Wednesday.
CDC officials did say they suspect they will find additional U.S. novel coronavirus cases, either from travelers or from close contacts of travelers from Hubei province in China.
Based on the first 425 cases with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia, the epidemic appeared to double in size every 7.4 days in its earliest stages, with a basic reproductive number estimated at 2.2, reported Zijian Feng, M. Med, of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, and colleagues.
“Considerable efforts to reduce transmission will be required to control outbreaks if similar dynamics apply elsewhere,” they noted.
Interestingly, the authors noted that while over half of those cases were linked to exposure to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market, the widely reported source of the outbreak in the earliest days of the virus, “it is now clear that human-to-human transmission is occurring and that the epidemic has been gradually growing in recent weeks.”
Human-to-human transmission of novel coronavirus outside China is on the minds of the international community, particularly as the World Health Organization convenes its emergency committee on Thursday to decide whether the outbreak constitutes an international health emergency. Reuters reported a fifth case of novel coronavirus in France late Wednesday, in the daughter of a man, age 80, who was hospitalized with the disease.
But the reproductive number — the average number of people who will contract the virus from one infected person — is also of considerable interest, as it determines how efficiently the virus can transmit among the population. Based on their data, Feng and colleagues estimated a basic reproductive number for novel coronavirus of 2.2 (95% CI 1.4-3.9), which falls into the widely reported “between 1.5 and 3” basic reproductive number for the virus.
“We’re still learning a lot about the transmission of the virus, so the reproductive number is going to change rapidly,” Amesh Adalja, MD, spokesperson, Infectious Diseases Society of America, told MedPage Today, speaking in general about the reproductive number of the virus.
Adalja also cautioned against putting a lot of emphasis into the reproductive number or using it as “a special magic number that applies to all situations,” because each patient has his or her own reproductive number.
“If you isolate a patient and they don’t transmit the virus to anybody, then their reproductive number is zero,” he said.
Feng and colleagues examined data from the first 425 laboratory-confirmed cases of patients with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia up through Jan. 22. Median age of patients was 59, though they ranged from age 15-89, and 56% were men. There were no cases in children younger than age 15, the authors said. Estimates of the epidemic growth rate were calculated from cases with symptom onset from Dec. 10 to Jan. 4.
On the U.S. front, CDC’s daily briefing Wednesday afternoon revealed no new cases in the U.S. So far, there are 165 persons under investigation, and 68 of those have tested negative. CDC officials also said that they have evacuated 195 U.S. citizens from Wuhan, who are now on U.S. soil, as reported by the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services earlier on Wednesday.
CDC officials did say they suspect they will find additional U.S. novel coronavirus cases, either from travelers or from close contacts of travelers from Hubei province in China.
This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of
China, the National Science and Technology Major Projects of China, the
China–U.S. Collaborative Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious
Disease, and National Mega-Projects for Infectious Disease, the
National Natural Science Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, and the Health and Medical Research Fund (Hong
Kong).
last updated
ResMed EPS beats by $0.18, beats on revenue
Revenue of $736.2M (+13.1% Y/Y) beats by $6.4M.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3536593-resmed-eps-beats-0_18-beats-on-revenue
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