Search This Blog

Sunday, July 12, 2020

NMC’s UAE entity weighing Abu Dhabi option for restructuring

Troubled hospital operator NMC Health’s entity in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), NMC Healthcare LLC, is considering applying for restructuring and insolvency proceedings locally, two sources familiar with the matter said.
The move comes three months after NMC Health Plc (NMMCF.PK), the London-listed holding company for the hospital group, went into administration in April after months of turmoil over its finances.
The two sources told Reuters that NMC Healthcare LLC was looking at options to file under the jurisdiction of Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM), which has its own laws relating to insolvency and corporate restructuring.
Such a move would help create a framework for the recognition of debt claims while the administrators of NMC Health Plc finalise the scheme of arrangement with creditors, one of the sources said.
A third source said the ADGM move is an option to obtain protection from the court from any enforcement proceedings from creditors, similar to Chapter 11 in the United States.
A scheme of arrangement is a binding agreement about payment of all, or part of, a firm’s debts over a period of time.
The administrators for NMC Health declined to comment.
The ADGM Registration Authority does not comment on its regulatory operations or disclose its engagements with external entities publicly, it said in an email.
NMC Health is the largest private healthcare provider in the UAE, operating more than 200 facilities including hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.
NMC’s operating entities were unaffected by the appointment of administrators in April and services continued.


Posted by at No comments:

Touchless: How the world’s busiest airport envisions post-COVID travel

With COVID-19 ravaging the aviation industry, airlines and airports worldwide are reining in costs and halting new spending, except in one area: reassuring pandemic-wary passengers about travel.
“Whatever the new normal (…) it’s going to be more and more around self-service,” Sean Donohue, chief executive of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport (DFW), told Reuters in an interview.
The airport is working with American Airlines (AAL.O) – whose home base is DFW – to roll out a self-check-in for luggage, and all of its restrooms will be entirely touchless by the end of July with technology developed by Infax Inc. They will have hands-free sinks, soap, flushing toilets, and paper towel dispensers, which will be equipped with sensors to alert workers when supplies are low.
“One of the biggest complaints airports receive are restrooms,” Donohue said.
Dallas is piloting three technology options for luggage check-ins: Amadeus’s ICM, SITA, and Materna IPS.
DFW has become the world’s busiest airport, according to figures from travel analytics firm Cirium, thanks in part to a strategy by large global carrier American to concentrate much of its pandemic flying through its Texas hub.
Last year DFW rolled out biometric boarding — where your face is your boarding pass — for international flights and is taking advantage of the lull in international traffic to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use the VeriScan technology for arriving passengers too, he said.
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) opened the first U.S. biometric terminal in Atlanta in 2018, and some airports in Europe and Asia also use facial recognition technology. It has spurred some concerns, however, with a U.S. government study finding racial bias in the technology and the European Union earlier this year considered banning it in public places over privacy concerns.
The Dallas airport is also testing new technology around better sanitization, beginning with ultraviolet technology that can kill germs before they circulate into the HVAC system.
But it has also deployed electrostatic foggers and hired a “hit team” of 150 people who are going through the terminals physically sanitizing high-touch areas.
“Technology is critical because it can be very efficient,” Donohue said, but customers “being able to visualize what’s happening is reassuring as well.”
DFW has invested millions of dollars above its cleaning and sanitation budget since the pandemic broke out, while suspending about $100 million of capital programs and reducing its second-half operating costs by about 20% as it addresses COVID-19’s steep hit to the industry, which only months ago was preparing for growth.
Nearly 114,000 customers went through DFW on July 11, an improvement from a 10,000 per day trough in April, but still just about half of last year’s volumes.
The airport has also been testing touchless technology for employee temperature checks, but is not currently planning hotly-debated checks for passengers, barring a federal mandate for which there has yet to be any inclination by the U.S. government.
Michael Davies, who runs the New Technology Ventures program at London Business School, said technology will be one of many changes to the airport experience going forward, with fewer overall travelers who will be seeking more space and spending less time dining and shopping.
“You put these things together and this feels in some interesting ways very much like back to the golden age of air travel,” said Davies.

Posted by at No comments:

Virologists select yellow fever vaccine as Covid vaccine candidate for clinical trials

Virologists at the Rega Institute at KU Leuven (Belgium) have developed a vaccine candidate that protects hamsters from infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Theirs is one of the first vaccine candidates that is proven to protect lab animals from infection. The team aims to start clinical trials next Winter. Their findings are pending peer review, but the researchers have already submitted their results to preprint server bioRxiv.
The team, which is led by Professor Johan Neyts and Kai Dallmeier, Ph.D., started developing eight prototypes of their vaccine against the new coronavirus in January. Lab experiments have now shown that one of these vaccine candidates is highly effective in hamsters. Hamsters who received the vaccine had few to no traces of the virus in their lungs after exposure.
To study the efficacy of the vaccine candidates in-depth, the virologists first developed a hamster model. When hamsters receive the SARS-CoV-2 virus through their nose, they develop a lung infection that is similar to COVID-19.
Healthy hamsters were first vaccinated and exposed to the virus a couple of weeks later. Control groups each received one of two alternatives: the , or a placebo.
“In the hamsters that received the vaccine candidate, we found up to half a million times less virus particles than in the control groups. These animals also didn’t develop any lung infections. The lungs of their counterparts in the control groups, by contrast, showed clear signs of infection and disease,” Neyts explains. A single dose of the vaccine candidate proved sufficient to prevent infection. Moreover, several animals were already protected within ten days after vaccination.
The vaccine candidate is based on the existing vaccine against yellow fever and may thus protect against both COVID-19 and yellow fever. The researchers inserted parts of the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the yellow fever vaccine. In the past, the KU Leuven team already used the same approach to develop vaccine candidates against Ebola, Zika, and rabies.
“The effectiveness of the yellow fever vaccine is well-established,” Neyts continues. “The vaccine has been in use for about eighty years, and close to 800 million people have already received it. One dose of the vaccine offers lifelong protection against yellow fever. More than 160 vaccines against COVID-19 are currently in development, but ours is the only one that is based on the yellow fever vaccine.”
The prototypes use the genetic code of the hallmark club-shaped spikes on the surface of the coronavirus. The virus uses these spikes to attach itself to the cell, after which the genetic material of the virus enters the cell. As a result, the coronavirus can multiply in the cells of our respiratory system. The vaccine candidate triggers an immune reaction in the body which starts producing antibodies that target the spikes. As a result, the virus can no longer attach itself to its target cells and can thus no longer spread.
“To select the most effective prototype out of eight candidates, we not only tested which prototype triggered the largest production of antibodies in the hamsters, but also whether the candidates offered proper protection against the virus. This increased our chances of finding a successful candidate,” says Professor Neyts. “Only by using an infection model, you can find out whether one or more doses are necessary, and how soon after vaccination there is sufficient efficacy.”
The vaccine candidate triggers an immune reaction in the body which starts producing antibodies that target the spikes on the surface of the coronavirus. Layla Aerts—KU Leuven From lab tests to clinical trials
“We started working on our prototypes soon after 12 January, when Chinese researchers shared the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 virus online,” Professor Neyts explains. “We are pleased with our results, even though there is still a long way to go. An experimental vaccine from a research lab cannot simply be used on human beings. That is why a specialized and accredited company will now have to produce the vaccine candidate. This will be done according to the highest quality standards.” Negotiations with potential partners are still ongoing.
“If everything keeps going according to plan, we want to start the first with human subjects by the end of this year,” says Kai Dallmeier, who leads the vaccine development team at KU Leuven. “It generally takes at least ten years to develop a , so our working speed has been exceptionally high. And we’re not alone: worldwide, many vaccines are in development. That is a good thing because, in this stage. It’s important not to put all our eggs in one basket. Most of the other can be grouped into a limited number of categories. So when one candidate in a particular category fails, the others in that category may fail too.”
Virus inhibitors
Neyts adds, “Mind you: vaccines only offer protection when people are vaccinated well before they are exposed to the virus. Vaccines are not a solution for people who are already ill. That is why we are also looking for a cure to help COVID-19 patients. We’re currently analyzing thousands of compounds of existing medicines to find out whether some may already be useful to slow down the virus in COVID-19 patients.”
Several medicines or combinations thereof are now studied in more detail, first in hamsters. We hope to be able to suggest combinations for studies with patients. At the same time, we are trying to develop new and powerful inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2. For this purpose, we have already tested more than one million molecules. We’re basically looking for a needle in a haystack. The substances we identify as inhibitors are then further optimized with the help of medicinal chemists.”
Explore further
More information: Lorena Sanchez Felipe et al. A single-dose live-attenuated YF17D-vectored SARS-CoV2 vaccine candidate, (2020). DOI: 10.1101/2020.07.08.193045 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.110 … /2020.07.08.193045v1

Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Thailand plans November human testing for potential coronavirus vaccine

Thai researchers plan to begin human trials of a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus in November and are preparing 10,000 doses, a senior official said on Sunday, aiming for a vaccine that could be ready for use by late next year.
Following favourable results in trials on primates, the next step is to manufacture doses for human trials, said Kiat Ruxrungtham, director of the Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University vaccine development program.
“At first we were going to send them in June, but it was not easy to plan everything,” Kiat told a news conference.
There are no approved vaccines for the virus that causes COVID-19, but 19 candidates are being trailed in humans globally. China is leading the race, with an experimental vaccine by Sinovac Biotech Ltd (SVA.O)
Thailand’s first facility should complete production in October and send the products to a second facility, which should finish by November, he said. Originally the earliest target was September, but Kiat said not enough vaccine can be ready by then.
Facilities in San Diego and Vancouver will produce 10,000 doses for the trials for 5,000 people. The first group, aged 18 to 60, will receive different doses of the vaccine, he said.
The trials will not accept volunteers “until we receive approval from the Thai Food and Drug Administration and an ethics committee,” Kiat said.
Thai company BioNet-Asia is preparing its facilities for large-scale manufacturing if the trials prove successful, he said.
“If everything goes according to plan, the vaccine will be ready for Thailand in the third or fourth quarter next year,” Kiat said.
Thailand on Sunday had a total of 3,217 confirmed infections, with no local transmissions reported in over a month, and 58 COVID-19 deaths.


Posted by at No comments:

What we know about plasma donations preventing COVID-19

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) is starting two new clinical trials to investigate if convalescent plasma can prevent infection of COVID-19 or lessen the severity of the disease in people who may have been exposed.
Previously, research has shown that plasma from someone who has recovered from COVID-19 can help patients who are currently battling COVID-19.
Now, a team of researchers want to see if the same convalescent plasma can help people who may have been exposed, people with high-risk health factors, and health care workers who have a high-risk of exposure.
This team will be the first in Texas to start these clinical trials.
Dr. Bela Patel with UT Health and Memorial Hermann Health Systems said currently the trials will consist of a small group, about 20 to 25 participants in each.
“As we get more plasma donations and as we get more patients who are participating in these trials, we can continue to increase those counts,” Patel said.
She said it’s why they are calling on COVID-19 survivors to give back to the community by donating plasma.
“If this trial works and we can actually give plasma to patients who are mildly sick or who have just turned positive, and we can prevent patients from going into the hospitals, especially patients that are over 65 years old who are diabetic, hypertensive or have other risk factors like cancer and so forth, then we can make a huge impact, not only in those patients lives, but also on the stress patients place on health care systems when there is large surges happening,” Patel said.
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, 9,689 COVID-19 patients are currently in Texas hospitals, as of July 9. Statewide there have been 230,346 COVID-19 cases reported and an estimated 118,326 Texans have recovered.
Patel said she is worried if the flu epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic are happening at the same time, that Texas hospitals will be overwhelmed with patients.
She said these trials will also help determine whether plasma therapy can reduce hospitalization and death prior to hospitalization among adults who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have developed symptoms.
“It’s really for individuals to give back to their communities so we can help people who are more vulnerable and may not survive the disease,” Patel said.
UTHealth and Memorial Hermann have partnered with the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center to screen and collect plasma.
To qualify to donate, you must:
  • Be at least 18 years of age
  • Be in overall good health, without any cold or flu symptoms
  • Have had a positive COVID-19 diagnosis documented by a laboratory test
  • Be fully recovered from COVID-19, with no symptoms for at least 14 days before the donation

Posted by at No comments:

Kids, counselors infected with coronavirus in camp outbreaks

A pair of YMCA camps in Georgia closed down in late June after a counselor tested positive for the coronavirus, but in the days since they were shut, the number of confirmed infections has climbed into the dozens, media outlets report.
YMCA called the summer season off early for High Harbour Camp locations at Lake Burton and Lake Allatoona, but at least 30 or more camp attendees have, or have had, the virus, outlets have reported.
But as of Friday, officials said the true number is much higher — at least 85 kids and counselors have tested positive — all stemming from their time at Lake Burton, Georgia Department of Public Health officials told McClatchy News.
Campers are all between 7-14 years old and staff between 16-22, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That’s about 18% of the 362 camper and 118 staff members, the publication said.
The YMCA says this situation happened despite careful planning and adherence to safety guidelines laid out by leading health experts and mandated by the state, 11Alive reported.
“A great deal of thought and planning went into the decision to hold Camp High Harbour,” Lauren Koontz, President and CEO of the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, told the station. “ In preparing for camp, we collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and the American Camp Association and followed the safety guidelines and protocols of the Executive Order from the State of Georgia.”
The summer is still young, but Georgia is far from the only state to see significant camp outbreaks.
Missouri health officials announced Monday that at least 82 campers, counselors and staff have been infected at the Kanakuk K-2 Camp — a Christian camp serving ages 13-18 — located near Branson, The Kansas City Star reported.
The camp talked about its new COVID-conscious health and safety procedures on its website, which the organization claims were reviewed by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, and that he was impressed with the plans, believing them sufficient, according to The Kansas City Star.
In Texas, another Christian camp called Pine Cove has had 76 COVID-19 cases linked back to it, Fox reports. And in Arkansas, Mount Ida’s Camp Ozark closed after “several” people were infected, though it didn’t say how many, Fox said.
It’s a calculated risk for camps, to open or not open, but most are choosing the latter, according to CNBC, or are being forced to stay closed by state or local government mandate. Nearly two-thirds of summer camps haven’t opened this year.
The American Camp Association told CNBC that between 20% and 30% of overnight camps are operating this season. Sacrifices made to insure safety have come at a cost, according to the ACA: An estimated $16 billion in revenue has been lost, as well as 900,000 jobs.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)