Quest says many U.S. COVID-19 tests taking more than a week

Quest Diagnostics Inc said on Monday the turnaround for COVID-19 tests it is conducting in the United States has lengthened, with non-prioritized patients waiting a week or more on average for their results.

So-called priority 1 patients – those in hospitals, pre-operative patients in acute care settings and symptomatic healthcare workers – had an average turnaround time of slightly more than one day, it said. Other patients waited around seven or more days.

Last week the company said its average turnaround time was one day for priority 1 patients and three to five days for all other groups.

Earlier on Monday, Quest said its second-quarter revenue would top analysts’ estimates, largely due to growing demand for the tests, boosting its shares 2%.

The United States has reported record numbers of new coronavirus cases in recent days, with the surge coming from states like Florida, Texas, California and Arizona.

Widespread testing is a core requirement for controlling the spread of the novel coronavirus, and test delays raise the likelihood of transmission.

The company said revenue in the quarter was around $1.83 billion, down 6% from a year ago, but still ahead of the average analyst estimate of $1.52 billion, according to Refinitiv I/B/E/S data.(reut.rs/2Zn5ieJ)

Quest said results also reflected stronger-than-expected recovery in base testing volumes, which have fallen about 34% from the year-ago quarter, excluding COVID-19 molecular and antibody testing.

The company had started witnessing a faster-than-expected recovery in its June U.S. testing volumes, after a more than 40% decline during the last two weeks of March.

Excluding items, the company expects to earn between $1.39 and $1.42 per share in the quarter. Analysts expect an adjusted profit of 12 cents a share.

Quest is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 23.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-questdiagnostics-outlook/quest-says-many-u-s-covid-19-tests-taking-more-than-a-week-idUSKCN24E1CE

Covid-linked Kawasaki-like multisystem inflammatory disease seen in an adult

Sabrina Sokolovsky, DO,^a Parita Soni, MD,^b Taryn Hoffman, MD,^a Philip Kahn, MD,^c and Joshua Scheers-Masters, MD^d,⁎

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Abstract

Recent reports have described a secondary Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) after a prior COVID-19 infection that often has features of Kawasaki disease (KD). Here, we report the case of a 36-year-old woman who presented to the emergency department hypotensive and tachycardic after 1 week of fevers, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, and was found to have the classic phenotype of complete Kawasaki’s Disease including nonexudative conjunctivitis, cracked lips, edema of the hands and feet, palmar erythema, a diffuse maculopapular rash, and cervical lymphadenopathy. Initial laboratory studies were significant for hyponatremia, elevated liver function tests including direct hyperbilirubinemia, and leukocytosis with neutrophilia. Imaging revealed mild gallbladder wall edema, a small area of colitis, and small pleural effusion. She was treated for Kawasaki Disease Shock Syndrome (KDSS) with pulse dose solumedrol, IVIG, and aspirin with near resolution of symptoms and normalization of vital signs within 1 day and subsequent improvement in her laboratory abnormalities. She was later found to be COVID-19 IgG positive, suggesting past exposure. This case represents an early report of a KD-like illness in an adult with serologic evidence of a previous COVID-19 infection, similar to MIS-C. It suggests that the virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 appears to cause a post-infectious inflammatory syndrome similar to KD in adults, as well as children. Our understanding of the myriad of COVID-19 symptoms and sequelae is rapidly evolving. We recommend physicians remain vigilant for inflammatory syndromes that mimic KD/KDSS which may warrant prompt treatment with IVIG and steroids.

Am J Emerg Med. 2020 Jun 25

doi: 10.1016/j.ajem.2020.06.053 [Epub ahead of print]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315983/

Roche Invests in Blueprint Medicines to Develop Lung-Cancer Drug

Roche Holding AG said Tuesday that it will invest and codevelop a lung-cancer drug with U.S. company Blueprint Medicines Corp.

The two companies will develop pralsetinib, a therapy for people with RET-altered nonsmall cell lung cancer, various types of thyroid cancer and other solid tumours.

The Swiss drug company said it will pay $675 million in cash upfront, as well as a $100 million equity investment in Blueprint Medicines.

The U.S.-based drug company is eligible to receive up to $927 million in potential milestones, plus royalties on net product sales outside the U.S.

Roche said the agreement gives it exclusive rights for global co-development and commercialization outside the U.S. and excluding Greater China.

https://www.marketscreener.com/ROCHE-HOLDING-AG-9364975/news/Roche-Invests-in-Blueprint-Medicines-to-Develop-Lung-Cancer-Drug-30919705/

California’s new lockdown dims outlook for U.S. growth in pandemic

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to reimpose restrictions on bars, restaurants, gyms and even ordinary office work to tamp down a surge of coronavirus infections is dimming economic growth prospects for the nation as a whole.

Darkening the outlook further was the decision by California’s two largest school districts – Los Angeles and San Diego – to conduct only online instruction when classes resume next month, a move that will make it challenging for parents of more than 825,000 students to return to work.

The Golden State, with 40 million people, employs more workers than any other state in the nation, and its production of goods and services is about equal to the combined output of Florida and Texas, two others states that have also seen resurgences of the virus.

After the Great Recession, California was the nation’s inarguable job growth engine, creating about one in every seven jobs, more than any other state.

By comparison, over the course of the 12-year post-financial crisis expansion Texas created one of every eight U.S. jobs, and Florida, about one of every 11.

In March, after becoming the first U.S. state to impose a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus pandemic, California also became the nation’s job-loss leader. Some 2.6 million jobs disappeared in March and April, about equal to the combined job losses in Texas and Florida.

The idea, of course, was to stop infections from getting out of control, trading a steep economic decline to create the conditions both for better public health and for a faster economic recovery.

So far, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Many states began to reopen in May. California allowed businesses to resume activity at a slower pace than many states did. That shows in the most recent state-by-state jobs data: during the course May, California added just 141,600 jobs, versus 182,000 in Florida and 237,000 in Texas.

Since then, the virus has resurged in much of the country, with the biggest increases in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California, forcing governors in all of those states to reimpose some restrictions.

But none has gone as far as Newsom did on Monday; and none of those states has near the footprint of California when it comes to economic heft on a national scale. Before the coronavirus crisis, the state accounted for about 14% of the whole U.S. economy.

With about 8,200 new infections daily and rising hospitalizations in California, Newsom is shutting bars and banning indoor restaurant dining statewide, and closing gyms, hair salons and non-essential workplaces in counties where the vast majority of its population lives.

And with those new restrictions, the state’s relatively meager job gains so far could stall or even reverse.

Moreover on Monday, Los Angeles, the state’s largest school district, and San Diego both announced they would not hold classes in-person come fall.

Speaking generally about schools and apart from the impact on education itself, “we’ll have lower GDP, lower growth, higher unemployment if we are not able to get the kids back in school,” Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said in an appearance earlier Monday.

https://www.marketscreener.com/news/California-s-new-lockdown-dims-outlook-for-U-S-growth-in-pandemic–30919107/?countview=0

NEC’s new facial recognition system can spot workers with masks on

Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp. has rolled out technology at its Tokyo headquarters that can recognize employees’ faces even when they’re wearing masks.

NEC is reportedly using the advanced facial recognition system in an experiment it started Monday that aims to reduce the amount of touching in its offices and stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The technology allows masked workers involved in the test to get through building security gates without ID cards, according to the Kyodo News Agency. Staffers can also reportedly use facial recognition to perform basic tasks like logging onto their computers, making copies and using vending machines.

But employees caught on camera without masks will get messages pushed to their smartphones telling them to put one on, Kyodo reported. NEC workers will also be able to see how congested bathrooms and restaurants are by checking their computers, according to the news agency.

The experiment is reportedly targeting 100,000 employees at NEC and its related companies in an effort to improve business practices amid the pandemic, which has forced workplaces around the world to close or make adjustments aimed at protecting public health.

NEC first unveiled its “multimodal biometric authentication” system in May that can identify masked users by reading the irises of their eyes as well as their faces. The technology boasts a false acceptance rate of less than 1 in 10 billion, the company said at the time.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/13/necs-new-facial-recognition-system-spots-masked-workers/

WHO says countries taking ‘wrong direction’ on virus

The World Health Organization warned Monday that too many countries were bungling their response to the coronavirus pandemic, meaning there could be no return to normality any time soon.

After a daily record of 230,000 new COVID-19 cases reported on Sunday, the UN health agency said the pandemic was only going to get worse unless people stuck to the basics of physical distancing, handwashing, wearing masks and staying home if sick.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that some countries easing their way out of lockdowns were now witnessing a resurgence of the virus because they were not following proven methods to reduce risks.

“I want to be straight with you: there will be no return to the ‘old normal’ for the foreseeable future,” Tedros told a virtual news briefing.

“Let me blunt: too many countries are headed in the wrong direction.

“The virus remains public enemy number one, but the actions of many governments and people do not reflect this.”

He said mixed messages from leaders were undermining trust.

If governments do not roll out a comprehensive strategy to suppress transmission of the virus, and if the public do not follow the basics, “there is only one way this pandemic is going to go,” Tedros said.

“It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”

‘Explosive transmission’

The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 570,000 people and infected more than 12.9 million since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.

Tedros said four scenarios were now playing out around the world.

They were: Countries that were alert and avoided large outbreaks, those that got a major outbreak under control, those that eased restrictions but are now backsliding, and those in an intense transmission phase.

Tedros said the heart of the crisis remains the Americas—accounting for more than half of infections—but stressed it was never too late to bring “explosive transmission” under control.

In a study released on Monday—the first of its kind—a team led by researchers from King’s College London said patients who recover from coronavirus infections might lose immunity to reinfection within months.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said it was not yet known whether recovered COVID-19 patients could be infected again, but “with other coronaviruses, that is the case”.

WHO COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said more studies were needed.

While those infected did mount some level of immune response through antibodies, “what we don’t know is how strong that protection is, and for how long that protection will last”, she said.

China mission

The WHO has sent a two-person mission to China to lay the groundwork for a study into the animal origins of the new coronavirus.

The epidemiologist and animal health expert have gone into quarantine after arriving at the weekend, as per Chinese regulations, but are already working.

Ryan said it was assumed the virus came from a bat, but the intermediate animal host that transmitted it between bats and humans was not yet established.

In Beijing, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press briefing that experts from China and the WHO would “enter into scientific cooperation on tracing the origins of the novel coronavirus”.

“The WHO also believes that finding the origin is a constantly developing process that could involve multiple countries and regions,” Hua insisted.

Ryan said the probe “should start at where the first clusters of human cases were detected—and that’s Wuhan in China.

“You need to go to the epicentre and work from there.”

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-countries-wrong-virus.html

1 in 3 young adults may face severe COVID-19 – UCSF study

As the number of young adults infected with the coronavirus surges throughout the nation, a new study by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals indicates that youth may not shield people from serious disease.

The study looked at data drawn from a nationally representative sample of approximately 8,400 men and women ages 18 to 25 and concluded that overall “medical vulnerability” was 33 percent for males and 30 percent for females. The impact of smoking surpassed other less common risks, the UCSF researchers reported in their study, which publishes in the Journal of Adolescent Health on July 13, 2020.

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not included in the UCSF study, indicates that while patients over 65 are significantly more likely to be hospitalized than younger people, the gap is narrowing. For the week ending April 18, there were 8.7 hospitalizations per 100,000 of the population for the 18-to-29 age bracket, compared with 128.3 per 100,000 of the population for patients over 65. By the week ending June 27, the figures were 34.7 and 306.7 respectively, representing a 299 percent increase in hospitalizations for young adults, versus a 139 percent increase in hospitalizations for older adults.

The researchers, led by first author Sally Adams, Ph.D., of the UCSF Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, determined vulnerability by referencing indicators identified by the CDC. These included heart conditions, diabetes, current asthma, immune conditions (such as lupus, gout, rheumatoid arthritis), liver conditions, obesity and smoking within the previous 30 days. Additionally, the researchers added e-cigarettes to tobacco and cigar use, which the CDC had included, stating that all three were associated with adverse effects on respiratory and immune function.

Since there was no data on the relative impact of each of the CDC risk factors, the researchers used an overall medical vulnerability estimate of having at least one of the indicators as the outcome variable, rather than a cumulative score of indicators. Thus, medical vulnerability was assessed according to each indicator, so that among smokers for example, 100 percent were vulnerable for severe COVID-19.

Most notable among their results was that medical vulnerability stood at 16.1 percent for the 6,741 non-smokers, versus 31.5 percent for the full sample of 8,405 young adults, which included smokers.

Smoking Linked to Progression of COVID-19

“Recent evidence indicates that smoking is associated with a higher likelihood of COVID-19 progression, including increased illness severity, ICU admission or death,” said Adams. “Smoking may have significant effects in young adults, who typically have low rates for most chronic diseases.”

Recent research also shows that young adults are starting to smoke at higher rates than adolescents, a reversal of previous trends, she noted.

The study, which used data from the National Health Interview Survey, found that over the previous 30 days, 10.9 percent had smoked a cigarette, 4.5 percent had smoked a cigar product and 7.2 percent had smoked an e-cigarette. The number of smokers—1,664 or 19.8 percent—was higher than the number of people with asthma (8.6 percent), obesity (3 percent) and immune disorders (2.4 percent). Additionally, 1.2 percent had diabetes, 0.6 percent had a liver condition and 0.5 percent had a heart condition.

“The risk of being medically vulnerable to severe disease is halved when smokers are removed from the sample,” said senior author Charles Irwin Jr., MD, of the UCSF Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. “Efforts to reduce smoking and e-cigarette use among young adults would likely lower their vulnerability to severe disease.”

Gender differences were noted in five vulnerability indicators. Women were more likely to have asthma, (10 percent versus 7.3 percent), to be obese (3.3 percent versus 2.6 percent) and to have immune conditions (3.2 percent versus 1.6 percent). But significantly fewer young women smoked, which resulted in overall medical vulnerability of 29.7 percent compared with 33.3 percent for young men.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-young-adults-severe-covid-.html