Travel insurers and travel agents will offer New York residents and
businesses the ability to buy coverage that would allow them to cancel a
trip for any reason, including those related to coronavirus, New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday.
The move followed complaints by consumers to the state’s insurance
regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS)
that so-called “cancel for any reason” travel coverage was not available
to them, Cuomo said.
Buyers must purchase the coverage, which is 40% to 60% more expensive
than standard travel insurance, typically within several weeks of the
initial trip payment and cancel the trip within two to three days of
departure, the regulator said.
Standard travel insurance typically excludes epidemics and pandemics,
the regulator said, making it unlikely that travelers who buy the
lesser coverage would be able to recoup coronavirus-related expenses.
“Cancel for any reason” is technically not insurance under New York
law because the coverage is not triggered by a certain type of event,
NYDFS said in guidance to insurers on Friday.
However, insurers can comply with New York law by showing that the
benefits are related to the kinds of business that they are authorized
to offer in the state, the regulator said.
Six insurers have agreed to offer “cancel for any reason” policies, including: Allianz, (ALVG.DE) Nationwide, Starr Indemnity, Berkshire, (BRKa.N) Crum & Forster, and Zurich (ZURN.S), Cuomo said. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-health-insurance/ny-travel-insurance-to-cover-coronavirus-in-cancel-for-any-reason-policies-gov-cuomo-idUSKBN20T2ZD
Confined to their cabins, passengers aboard a mammoth cruise ship off
the California coast awaited coronavirus test results Friday amid
evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of
cases during its previous voyage.
On Thursday, a military helicopter crew lowered test kits onto the
951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope and later retrieved them for
analysis as the vessel waited off San Francisco, under orders to keep
its distance from shore. Princess Cruises said 45 of the more than 3,500
people on board were tested. Results were expected as early as Friday.
Health officials trying to establish whether the virus is circulating
on the Grand Princess undertook the testing after reporting that a
passenger on a previous voyage of the ship, in February, died of the
disease. In the past few days, health authorities
disclosed that least six other people who were on the same excursion
were also found to be infected. And some passengers from that trip
stayed aboard for the current voyage.
“The ship will not come on shore until we appropriately assess the
passengers,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday. Depending on
what they find, authorities could order a quarantine of all or some of
those aboard.
Another Princess cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined
for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus, and
ultimately about 700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what
experts pronounced a public-health failure, with the vessel essentially
becoming a floating germ factory.
Meanwhile, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus
climbed to 14, with all but one victim in Washington state, while the
number of infections swelled to over 200, scattered across at least 18
states. Pennsylvania and Indiana reported their first cases.
On Wall Street, stocks went into another slide as fears mounted over
the potential damage to the global economy from factory shutdowns,
travel bans, quarantines and cancellations of events big and small. And
President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to help public
health agencies deal with crisis and spur development of vaccines and
treatments.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 100,000 people and killed
over 3,400, the vast majority of them in China. Most cases have been
mild, and more than half of those infected have recovered.
Most of the dead in the U.S. were from suburban Seattle’s Life Care
Center nursing home, now the subject of federal and state investigations
that could lead to sanctions against it, including a possible takeover
of its management. Washington state has the nation’s biggest
concentration of cases, with at least 70.
Also, 30 medical professionals from the U.S. Public Health Service
will arrive Saturday at the nursing home to help care for the patients
and provide relief to the exhausted staff, said Dow Constantine,
executive in charge of Seattle’s King County.
“We are grateful the cavalry is arriving. It will make rapid change
in the conditions there,” he said. The nursing home was down to 69
residents after 15 were taken to the hospital in the preceding 24 hours,
Constantine said.
The state of Washington is also setting up a command center dedicated to nursing homes, Gov. Jay Inslee said.
Some major businesses in the Seattle metropolitan area, including
Microsoft and Amazon, which together employ more than 100,000 people in
the region. have shut down operations or urged employees to work from
home. The University of Washington called off classes at its three
Seattle-area campuses for the next two weeks and will instead teach its
57,000 students online. And a comics convention next week in Seattle
that was expected to draw about 100,000 people was canceled.
The ship off California was returning to San Francisco after visiting Hawaii.
A Sacramento-area man who sailed aboard the Grand Princess in
February on a visit to a series of Mexican ports later succumbed to the
coronavirus, according to California authorities. Others who were on
that voyage have also tested positive, with four cases in Northern
California and two in Canada, authorities said.
However, Mexico’s top epidemiologist denied that the passenger who
died in California was on a ship that visited Mexican ports. Dr. José
Luis Alomía Zegarra said the passenger was on a different cruise that
did not stop in Mexico.
Three dozen passengers on the Grand Princess have had flu-like
symptoms over the past two weeks or so, said Mary Ellen Carroll,
executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency
Management.
An epidemiologist who studies the spread of virus particles said the
recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, along with the
close quarters and communal settings, make passengers vulnerable to
infectious diseases.
“They’re not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly,”
said Don Milton of the University of Maryland. “You’re going to amplify
the infection by keeping people on the boat.”
He said whether tests confirm 45 or even two cases of coronavirus on
the Grand Princess, the fallout from the ship quarantined in Japan
demonstrates the urgent need to move people off the ship.
“My advice is to get people off and into a safer quarantine environment than a cruise ship,” Milton said.
Michele Smith, a Grand Princess passenger, posted video on Facebook
of the helicopter that arrived at the ship. Another video showed a crew
member wearing gloves and a mask and spraying and wiping a handrail.
“We have crews constantly cleaning our ship,” Smith was heard saying.
In a post, Smith said she and her husband were not quarantined and
were told that only the people who had been on the Mexico voyage or
those showing flu-like symptoms had to isolate themselves.
“Spirits are as high as can be under these circumstances. We are blessed to be healthy, comfortable and well-fed,” she wrote.
But a late-night statement Thursday from the cruise line said all
guests were asked to stay in their rooms while results were awaited, in
keeping with guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-virus-cases-linked-cruise-ship.html
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office in recent days granted
exclusions from import tariffs for dozens of medical products imported
from China, including face masks, hand sanitizing wipes and examination
gloves, filings with the agency showed on Friday.
Many of the exclusion requests for medical products appear to have
been expedited amid the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak, with
approvals granted just over one month past a Jan. 31 application
deadline.
Requests to exclude other products from President Donald Trump’s
Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods have taken months. Apple Inc’s
requests for exclusions on products from AirPod headphones to the
HomePod smart speaker filed on Oct. 31 are still pending.
Medline International Inc has already received exclusions on 30
products ranging from surgical gowns to face masks and medicine cups,
most of which the company applied for at the end of January. A number of
the exclusions were granted on Thursday, USTR documents showed.
The Rehovet, Israel-based biopharmaceutical outfit
develops treatments for rare and aggressive cancers by leveraging its
bioinformatics platform and next-gen sequencing. Lead candidate is AL101, a selective injectable small molecule gamma secretase inhibitor (GSI) in-licensed from Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) in November 2017, in Phase 2 development for certain adenoid cystic carcinoma patients.
Candidate #2 is AL102, an oral GSI also in-licensed from BMY, for the potential treatment of desmoid tumors.
Nano cap Cocrystal Pharma (NASDAQ:COCP) jumps 36% after hours on the heels of its announcement that it has initiated a coronavirus program.
Last week, it announced a
license deal with Kansas State University Research Foundation (KSURF)
for certain antiviral compounds for the potential treatment of norovirus
and coronavirus infections.
It says that it will seek collaboration partners to advance development.
If you have traveled internationally the past 2 months, you may have
encountered them: health officers briefly pointing a thermometer gun at
your forehead or watching as you go by to check for signs of a cough or
difficulty breathing. Many countries are now watching arriving and
departing air passengers who might suffer from the viral disease
COVID-19; some require passengers to fill out health declarations. (Some
also simply ban or quarantine those who have recently been in outbreak
hot spots.)
Exit and entry screening may look reassuring, but experience with
other diseases shows it’s exceedingly rare for screeners to detect
infected passengers. Just last week, eight passengers who later tested
positive for COVID-19 arrived in Shanghai from Italy and passed the
airport screeners unnoticed, for example. And even if screeners do find
the occasional case, it has almost no impact on the course of an
outbreak.
“Ultimately, measures aimed at catching infections in travelers will
only delay a local epidemic and not prevent it,” says Ben Cowling, an
epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. He and others say
screening is often instituted to show that a government is taking
action, even if the impact is marginal.
Still, researchers say, there can be benefits. Evaluating and
quizzing passengers before they board planes—exit screening—may prevent
some who are sick or were exposed to a virus from traveling. Entry
screening, done on arrival at the destination airport, can be an
opportunity to gather contact information that is useful if it turns out
an infection did spread during a flight and to give travelers guidance
on what to do if they become ill.
Just this week, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the
coronavirus response, pledged “100% screening” on direct flights from
Italy and South Korea to the United States. China, which reported only
143 new cases yesterday, “will cooperate internationally to institute
exit and entry screening with relevant regions suffering epidemics,” Liu
Haitao, an official at China’s National Immigration Administration,
said at a 1 March press conference in Beijing, according to the state
broadcaster CCTV.
How many COVID-19 cases screening has detected worldwide so far is
unclear. At least one New Zealander was prevented from boarding an
evacuation flight from Wuhan, China, after failing a health check, The New Zealand Herald reported.
The United States started entry screening of U.S. citizens, permanent
residents, and their families who have been in China within the previous
14 days at 11 airports on 2 February. (Anybody else who has been in
China within that period cannot enter the country.) By 23 February,
46,016 air travelers had been screened; only one tested positive and was isolated for treatment,
according to a 24 February report from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC). That clearly has not halted the spread of
the virus in the United States, which as of this morning has 99 confirmed cases, according to CDC, plus 49 more among people repatriated from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan.
There are many ways infected people can slip through the net. Thermal
scanners and handheld thermometers aren’t perfect. The biggest
shortcoming is that they measure skin temperature, which can be higher
or lower than core body temperature, the key metric for fevers. The
devices produce false positives as well as false negatives,
according to the EU Health Programme. (Travelers flagged as feverish by
scanners typically go through a secondary screening where oral, ear, or
armpit thermometers are used to confirm the person’s temperature.)
Passengers can also take fever-suppressing drugs or lie about their
symptoms and where they have been. Most importantly, infected people
still in their incubation phase—meaning they don’t have symptoms—are
often missed. For COVID-19, that period can be anywhere between 2 and 14
days.
One dramatic example of the failures of airport screening just played
out in China after eight Chinese citizens, all employees at a
restaurant in Bergamo, Italy, arrived at Shanghai Pudong International
Airport on 27 and 29 February, according to information pieced together
from details in the local media and terse announcements by the Health
& Family Planning Committee of Lishui, a city in Zhejiang province,
which borders Shanghai.
Pudong has had a policy to scan all arriving passengers for fever
using “noncontact thermal imaging” since late January; it also requires
passengers to report their health status on arrival. It’s unclear
whether any of the eight restaurant workers had symptoms, or how they
handled that reporting. But after taking chartered cars to Lishui, their
hometown, one of the passengers fell ill; she tested positive for
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, on 1 March. The next day,
the remaining seven tested positive as well. They were the first
confirmed cases in Zhejiang province in 1 week.
Ultimately measures aimed at catching infections in travelers will only delay a local epidemic and not prevent it.
Past experience doesn’t instill much confidence either. In a 2019 review in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers scrutinized 114 scientific papers and reportson infectious disease screening published
in the past 15 years. Most of the data are about Ebola, a serious viral
disease whose incubation period is anywhere between 2 days and 3 weeks.
Between August 2014 and January 2016, the review found, not a single
Ebola case was detected among 300,000 passengers screened before
boarding flights in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which all had big
Ebola epidemics. But four infected passengers slipped through exit
screening because they didn’t have symptoms yet.
Still, exit screening may have helped head off more draconian travel
restrictions by showing that measures were being taken to protect
nonaffected countries, said the paper, authored by Christos
Hadjichristodoulou and Varvara Mouchtouri of the University of Thessaly
and colleagues. Knowing they would have encountered exit screening may
also have deterred some people exposed to Ebola from even trying to
travel.
What about screening at the other end of the trip? Taiwan, Singapore,
Australia, and Canada all implemented entry screening for severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is similar to COVID-19 and also
caused by a coronavirus, during the 2002–03 outbreak; none intercepted
any patients. However, the outbreak was largely contained by the time
the screening was initiated, and it came too late to prevent
introduction of SARS: All four countries or regions already had cases.
During the 2014–16 Ebola epidemic, five countries asked incoming
travelers about symptoms and possible exposure to patients and checked
for fevers. They didn’t find a single case either. But two infected,
asymptomatic passengers slipped through entry screening, one in the
United States and one in the United Kingdom.
China and Japan mounted extensive entry screening programs during the
H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009, but studies found that the screenings
captured small fractions of those actually infected with the virus and
both countries had significant outbreaks anyway, the team reports in its
review. Entry screening is “ineffective” in detecting infected
travelers, Hadjichristodoulou and Mouchtouri tell Science.
In the end, travelers with serious infectious diseases turn up at
hospitals, clinics, and physicians’ offices rather than being caught at
airports. And screening is costly: Canada spent an estimated $5.7
million on its SARS entry screening, and Australia spent $50,000 per
detected H1N1 case in 2009, Hadjichristodoulou and Mouchtouri say.
Every infectious disease behaves differently, but the duo doesn’t
expect airport screening for COVID-19 to be more effective than for SARS
or pandemic flu. And it’s unlikely to have a significant impact on the
course of the outbreak, Cowling says.
Two recent modeling studies call screening into question as well.
Researchers at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
concluded that approximately 75% of passengers infected with COVID-19
and traveling from affected Chinese cities would not be detected by entry screening. A study by a group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine concluded that exit and entry screening “is unlikely to prevent passage of infected travelers into new countries or regions where they may seed local transmission.”
For countries that nonetheless adopt screening, the World Health
Organization emphasizes that it is not a matter of just holding up a
thermometer gun. Exit screening should start with temperature and symptom checks and interviews of passengers for potential exposure to high-risk contacts.
Symptomatic travelers should be given further medical examination and
testing, and confirmed cases should be moved to isolation and treatment.
Entry screening should be paired with collecting data about the
patient’s whereabouts over the past few weeks that can later help
with tracing their contacts. Travelers should also be given information
to increase disease awareness and encouraged to practice good personal
hygiene, says epidemiologist Benjamin Anderson of Duke Kunshan
University. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/why-airport-screening-wont-stop-spread-coronavirus
The Saudi ministry of sports announced on Friday it will suspend
public attendance at all sports events starting Saturday, a statement
from the ministry reported.
The statement added that this comes as a precautionary measure to
stop the spread of the coronavirus in places that witness mass crowds,
and the suspension will be until further notice
