As part of Walgreens ongoing efforts to increase access to COVID-19 testing in communities across the U.S., the company announced today it has entered into an agreement with Labcorp™ to sell Pixel by Labcorp COVID-19 PCR Test Home Collection Kits over-the-counter in up to 6,000 Walgreens stores nationwide beginning in spring of this year. Walgreens is making significant strides to increase on-site testing capacity at more than 5,000 Walgreens pharmacy locations by April 1, with more than half of sites located in socially vulnerable areas.
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
NYU launching $10M Center for Psychedelic Medicine
New York University wants to expand our minds — but in a trippy new way.
NYU Langone Health’s Department of Psychiatry plans to establish a Center for Psychedelic Medicine, a hallucinatory hub that will support research on treating addiction, chronic pain, opioid addiction and “existential distress” — among other physical and emotional maladies — using psychedelics. NYU researchers are already involved in studies on the treatment of alcoholism, anxiety and major depressive disorder with psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and the treatment of severe PTSD with MDMA (also known as ecstasy and molly).
The program, announced Wednesday, will also be the home base for NYU’s new Psychedelic Medicine Research Training Program, which will attempt to make psychedelic medicine more mainstream and increase the number of experts in the field.
The new facility is backed by $10 million from donors, including Dr. Bronner’s soaps and psychedelic medicine company MindMed.
The center is being created to “ensure that the momentum created by the modern psychedelic renaissance is sustained,” according to NYU psychiatry professor Michael P. Bogenschutz, who will be the center’s director.
Benefactors believe the program will not only advance psychedelic-inspired medicinal research, but also help those suffering from “some of the most prevalent issues in mental health for patients,” according to a press release, which added, “We are very excited about what the future holds.”
The center comes amid a surge in medicinal interest in psychedelics, with Oregon becoming the first state to legalize magic mushrooms in November, and California currently considering a bill that would decriminalize acid. Last August, a guided ketamine trip therapy clinic opened in Manhattan.
Recreationally, psychedelics appear to be more popular than ever: In a July 2020 study, researchers found that LSD has become exponentially more popular among American adults as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“LSD is used primarily to escape. And given that the world’s on fire, people might be using it as a therapeutic mechanism,” University of Cincinnati doctoral candidate Andrew Yockey told Scientific American at the time. “Now that COVID’s hit, I’d guess that use has probably tripled.”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/23/nyu-launching-10m-center-for-psychedelic-medicine-in-manhattan/
Vending machines with COVID-19 home tests arrive in NYC
NYC has seen vending machines for engagement rings and Brooks Brothers shirts, as well as PPE like gloves and sanitizing wipes, but this new Manhattan machine is really testing the limits.
Since January, a storefront at 225 W. 34th St. — formerly home to a Lane Bryant — has hosted two of health company Wellness 4 Humanity’s new vending machines, which sell DIY at-home COVID tests instead of snacks or sodas.
For $149 — credit or debit cards only, no cash — you can pick up a PCR saliva test, use it at your leisure, mail it to one of the company’s partner labs via FedEx with a pre-printed label and get your results via text or email in 48 hours.
“I wanted to get something quick that would be reliable,” said Lauren Folland, 24, of Jamaica, Queens, who got a test from the machine on Monday after flying home from a Fresno, California, funeral.
Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center found that, in the detection of COVID-19, a self-collected saliva sample is as accurate as a nasal swab administered by a health care worker.
In comparison to the pharmacy drive-thrus where Folland has been tested 10 or so times over the course of the pandemic, the machine-dispensed kit felt like “the most luxury way to get tested: You don’t have to sit in your car. You just go and pick up the test and do it at home,” she told The Post, adding that not having to “deal with scheduling” was a bonus.
While not FDA approved, the test is among a swath of at-home nasal and saliva collection kits available under emergency use authorization (EUA) — meaning the FDA allows them “when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved and available alternatives.”
Experts say that DIY kits can help curb the virus’ spread by minimizing exposure to health care workers and other, potentially infected people, and by reducing turnaround times.
“The use of self-collected saliva has the potential to minimize health care worker exposure and decrease the need for specialized collection devices, such as swabs and viral transport media,” said Esther Babady, director of the Clinical Microbiology Service at MSK, in December.
Folland received the kit for free from the company, and the assistant property manager said she wouldn’t make this her regular form of testing. “I would love to be able to afford [the kits] all the time, but they’re quite expensive,” she said (the tests can be submitted for insurance reimbursement). The machines are also subject to the building’s hours — it’s open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. “If it was just on the street it would be a lot easier,” she added.
Wellness 4 Humanity aims to install the machines in other major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Dallas. The Oakland International Airport already has them, and some colleges have also recently installed COVID test-dispensing vending machines, including the University of California in San Diego.
While Folland said the experience was streamlined, she also admitted that it felt like a sad sign of the times.
“It’s odd that this is our life now: Vending machines are not for fun things, but [for] something as scary as a PCR COVID test,” she said. “The function makes sense, but it’s also like, ‘Wow this is what you’re living in right now.’ ”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/23/vending-machines-with-covid-19-home-tests-arrive-in-nyc/
Cuomo Health Dept. duped, using Hong Kong law firm to recoup COVID cash
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration got swindled trying to buy millions of dollars of Chinese medical gear amid the coronavirus crisis — and has been forced to hire a law firm in Hong Kong in a bid to recoup the taxpayer money it lost, The Post has learned.
The state Department of Health signed a $125,000 contract with the overseas lawyers, Gall Solicitors late last year, according to records posted online by the state Comptroller’s Office.
The one-year pact was exempted from a “pre-audit” by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli under pandemic-related emergency powers Cuomo granted himself on March 7 — and which some lawmakers now want to revoke due to the spiraling controversy over New York’s nursing home deaths.
Earlier this month, The Post exclusively revealed that a top aide privately admitted Cuomo’s administration hid the number of resident deaths in hospitals from lawmakers and the public due to fear that federal prosecutors would use it “against us.” That has sparked calls for Cuomo to be impeached and also a reported federal Justice Department probe.
Officials declined to provide The Post with a copy of the legal retainer contract or details of the underlying dispute.
But a Cuomo spokesman acknowledged that the DOH hired Gall on Dec. 24 “to help us pursue recovery of state funds there, related to procurement.”
“The contract was just approved and papers will be filed soon, and we’ll reserve further comment until then,” spokesman Rich Azzopardi said.
The DOH previously hired the white-shoe law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to vet its purchases of coronavirus-related medical equipment and supplies.
That agreement was struck on March 1 and could cost taxpayers as much as $1.25 million, according to the comptroller’s website.
“Skadden was retained to provide much-needed expertise to ensure that the lifesaving equipment the State procured met FDA requirements before the equipment was distributed to hospitals,” DOH spokesman Gary Holmes said.
The state rushed into more than $1 billion worth of deals for medical supplies and equipment last year — only to later seek partial refunds amounting to about one-third of the total, the New York Times reported in mid-December, shortly before the DOH hired Gall.
The money at issue included a $12.5 million deposit for 1,000 ventilators from Please Me LLC, a company that had never before sold the high-tech devices but whose product line included sex toys, children’s books and other items, The Times said.
The state also paid a Silicon Valley engineer, Yaron Oren-Pines, $69.1 million in March for 1,450 ventilators — three times the going rate — shortly after he tweeted, “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and invasive,” but never received a single unit, Buzzfeed News reported in April.
The state recovered $59 million but was still pursuing the remaining $10 million, Buzzfeed reported in October.
In his best-selling memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Cuomo defended that deal on grounds that “we believed lives were on the line and understood we had few alternatives.”
Cuomo also wrote that “law enforcement is reviewing the matter for possible prosecution.”
Azzopardi didn’t respond to a request for updates on either of the failed purchases of ventilators but said the state had recovered a total of around $235 million in misspent funds.
Please Me LLC owner Eddie Sitt, Oren-Pines, and Skadden, Arps also didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
California COVID-19 variant poses serious threat
A homegrown coronavirus strain that emerged in California is more contagious and shows higher resistance to antibodies from COVID-19 vaccines, scientists have warned.
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco said the new variant has dangerous implications and should be considered one “of concern” on par with from United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The devil is already here,” Dr. Charles Chiu, who led the study, told the outlet. “I wish it were different. But the science is the science.”
In the team’s unpublished findings, it suggests that the variant is about 19 percent to 24 percent more transmissible, the outlet reported.
Over a period of just five months, the new strain grew to account for more than 50 percent of all coronavirus samples being used for genetic sequencing in the state, Chiu said.
The strain was also determined to be more resistant to neutralizing antibodies — which raises serious questions about how much vaccines will be able to protect against it.
Compared to prior strains, the effectiveness of neutralizing antibodies against the variant was reduced to half its usual levels, the study found, according to the LA Times.
Chiu said the variant will likely account for 90 percent of the state’s cases by the end of the month.
Similar to the United Kingdom and South Africa strains, the variant features a mutation to its spike protein — the part of the virus that makes it infectious, the newspaper reported.
Scientists recreated the mutation in a lab and found that it was able to infect human lung tissue about 40 percent more readily, the outlet reported.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/24/new-california-covid-19-variant-poses-serious-threat-scientists/
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