OPEC+ expects the impact on the oil market from the Omicron coronavirus variant to be mild and temporary, according a copy of technical committee report of the group seen by Reuters on Sunday.
"The impact of the new Omicron variant is expected to be mild and short-lived, as the world becomes better equipped to manage COVID-19 and its related challenges," the report said.
Multiple subway lines will be out of commission for the first workday of the year on Monday as COVID-19 surges among the MTA’s workforce, transit officials said.
Officials took the B, W and Z trains out of service last week to cope with the spike in virus cases and they will remain shuttered on Monday, Transportation Authority rep Aaron Donovan said. Express trains that typically skip those stations will make local stops.
“Like every business and agency in the region, the MTA is navigating through a spike in workforce positive COVID test results,” Donovan said in a statement. “The Authority is proactively managing to ensure continuation of reliable service 24/7 to every subway station.”
Other train and bus routes have also suffered delays and cancellations, according to the MTA’s public social media feeds. Friday alone saw 56 scheduled bus runs canceled on the @NYCTBuses Twitter account.
Transit officials have declined to say how many workers have been sidelined by Omicron. Sources across the authority estimate the number to be several thousand.
“The infection rate is very high,” said one insider. “It doesn’t take Dr. Fauci to know that.”
Sick employees have been met with wait times as high as six hours on the MTA’s COVID-19 hotline, sources said, which they must call to report virus symptoms. Officials eventually upped the number of hotline personnel and added a second phone number and email address for workers to contact, transit sources said.
The same hotline also crashed in March 2020, when at least 8,700 employees missed work due to either having or being exposed to COVID-19. Low workforce availability forced the MTA to scale back service, leading to longer wait times for riders.
Workers contracting COVID is just one source of the MTA’s staffing woes. The authority is already down on bus and train operators due to a pandemic hiring freeze that officials do not expect to have recovered from until well into the new year.
Unlike city employees, employees of the state-run MTA are not required to be vaccinated. Gov. Kathy Hochul and MTA leaders in November — before the Omicron wave hit — defended that approach by pointing to low in-house COVID positivity rates.
Subway ridership dropped in the last two weeks of 2021 after hitting pandemic era highs earlier in December, according to publicly-available data. The MTA — whose financial future depends on rider fares — reverted its own desk workers to working from home part-time through Jan. 15, according to a company wide memo obtained by The Post.
More than 170 MTA employees have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/02/expect-long-subway-waits-due-to-covid-crew-shortages-mta/
Biotech stocks came under selling pressure in the final week of 2021, although they carved out modest gains for the year.
On the regulatory front, the Food And Drug Administration approved Xeris Biopharma Holdings Inc.'s (XERS) Recorlev for the treatment of endogenous hypercortisolemia in adult patients with Cushing's syndrome for whom surgery is not an option or has not been curative.
AstraZeneca plc (NASDAQ:AZN) announced the closure of the development and commercialization agreement with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS) for epiontersen, a Phase 3 investigational antisense therapy being evaluated for all types of transthyretin amyloidosis, a rare disease caused by abnormal deposits of amyloid.
BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO) shares lost more than half of their market capitalization after a failed Phase 3 study of its acoramidis for the treatment of symptomatic TTR amyloid cardiomyopathy.
Here are the key catalysts that can sway biotech stocks in the unfolding week:
Goldman Sachs 14th Annual Healthcare CEOs Unscripted Conference: Jan. 6
Edgewise Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:EWTX) is scheduled to report topline results from the Phase 1b clinical trial of EDG-5506 in individuals with Becker muscular dystrophy on Wednesday, at 9 am.
Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRO) is due to provide interim data from the dose-expansion cohort of the Phase 1 study of STRO-002, an antibody-drug conjugate, for patients with advanced ovarian cancer at a company-hosted KOL virtual event. The event and Q&A session will be available by webcast, to be held on Wednesday, at 5 pm ET.
Avalo Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVTX) will host a virtual investor day on Thursday, from 8 am to 10 am. At the event, the company will provide updates on the Phase 1b proof-of-concept study of AVTX-002 in Crohn's disease, the AVTX-007 development program for multiple myeloma and adult-onset Still's disease and the AVTX-803 development program for leukocyte adhesion deficiency type II.
AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASAQ: ANGO) (Thursday, before the market open)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced on Friday that the state has requested federal assistance to help with COVID-19 testing and treatment amid a surge in cases.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management and the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) asked for federal resources to support testing centers, medical personnel and more monoclonal antibody treatments.
Abbott, who has been a leading opponent of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, said in a statement that Texas is “urging the federal government to step up in this fight and provide the resources necessary to help protect Texans.”
“Testing sites, additional medical staff, and continued shipments of therapeutics from the federal government will help us continue to save lives and mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” he said. “Detecting COVID-19 and preventing COVID-related hospitalizations are critical to our fight against this virus."
The state is specifically requesting testing sites in Bexar, Cameron, Dallas, Harris, Hidalgo and Tarrant counties based on COVID-19 metrics, including positivity rates and hospitalizations, and asking for more supplies of the sotrovimab monoclonal antibody treatment.
As of Sunday afternoon, Harris County had the fifth-most confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus resource center.
Additionally, Texas requested three teams of medical personnel to help in hospitals in urban areas that do not have staff contracted with the DSHS and asked the federal government to continue supplying the Regeneron and bamlanivimab monoclonal antibody treatments.
The requests comes after the Texas Health and Human Services Commission revealed last week that the state had run out of its supply of sotrovimab, which has proved to be effective in combating the omicron variant. The omicron strain is driving a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases.
The state said infusion centers would not be able to provide the treatment until “federal authorities ship additional courses of sotrovimab to Texas in January.”
Abbott last week said that while President Biden "vows full federal support to help states combat COVID," in reality, "he's not."
"Biden is hoarding the anti-body therapeutic drugs & denying states independent access to that medical treatment. Now, he has stopped providing any of that medicine to Texas," he added.
Texas is currently seeing a spike in coronavirus cases. At the end of December, the state was reporting more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases per day, up from the roughly 4,000 new daily COVID-19 infections in November, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Biden last month announced new efforts to safeguard Americans and bolster communities and hospitals amid the spread of omicron.
The state of Texas made headlines on Friday after a federal judge blocked mask and vaccine mandates in the state’s Head Start program. Abbott, in a tweet after the ruling, said, “Texas just beat Biden again.”
Abbott issued an executive order in October barring vaccine mandates from being implemented in the state after Biden announced a series of federal mandates for health care workers, large employers and federal contractors.
The highly transmissible COVID-19 omicron variant has thrown many pandemic-related plans for a loop as Americans canceled holiday plans or were left stuck in a travel nightmare caused by flight crews who could not work because they became sick.
A decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week to cut isolation time in half, from 10 days to five days for asymptomatic COVID-19, was met with backlash after officials said it was due in part to allow people to return to work faster. It came one week after some companies, including Delta Air Lines, wrote to the CDC requesting such a change.
Now, Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical adviser, says the testing part of that guidance may change to now require one as officials struggle with rising cases that at times are breaking pandemic records.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week" on Sunday, Fauci said the CDC was looking into amending its isolation guidelines nearly one week after it updated its latest guidance, which did not require a negative test before the five days were up.
"There has been some concern about why we don't ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration," Fauci said. “The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that. Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we're going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”
Last week, Jerome Adams, the former surgeon general during the Trump administration, criticized the abbreviated time and advised people to still get a COVID-19 test before leaving isolation.
"Regardless of what CDC says, you really should try to obtain an antigen test," Adams tweeted. "There’s not a scientist or doctor I’ve met yet who wouldn’t do this for themselves/ their family."
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday praised the federal government's recent handling the COVID-19 pandemic, but said its messaging has been "a little bit inconsistent."
"It's a recognition that we have to be able to manage our way through this virus. We have to get people to work the supply shortages, the staff shortages — [those] really do a great deal of harm as well," Hutchinson said while appearing on "Fox News Sunday."
Amid the latest surge in cases, officials across the country have also begun weighing the possibility of closing down schools and returning to remote learning. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Sunday said the government was committed to maintaining in-person learning.
"We've been very clear, our expectation is for schools to be open full time for students for in-person learning. We remember the impact of school closures on students last year, and our science is better, we have better tools," Cardona said on "Fox News Sunday."
President Biden has also stayed away from suggesting any pandemic-related lockdowns or stay at home orders, a politically unpopular option that could help curb the spread of the latest variant.
Cardona expressed his support for continued vaccinations, but said he would leave vaccination decisions to the state and local levels.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, said on Sunday that he was in favor of "preemptive" school closures, but said there may also be situations in the future where "reactive" school closures will happen due to the surge in cases.
Asked by "Face the Nation," host Margaret Brennan about reports that antigen tests aren't as efficient at detecting the omicron variant, Gottlieb said that current data suggests the tests can detect the strain at a "reasonably confident" rate.
Last month, the Biden administration introduced a "test to stay" approach for schools, allowing students who have been exposed to the coronavirus to stay in school if they test negative for the virus twice in one week.
Fauci also on Sunday said Americans “don’t want to get complacent” despite reports that the omicron variant may lead to less-severe illness than previous COVID-19 strains.
Asked by host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” about early evidence that the omicron variant leads to less-serious infections and illness, Fauci said that while there is “accumulating evidence,” it is “still early.”
A Florida-based hospital system revealed on Saturday it suffered a data breach that included the personal and medical information of patients and staff.
In a statement, Broward Health said hackers gained access to its network on Oct. 15 through a third-party medical provider that had access to its system.
Broward Health detected the intrusion four days later and notified the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The hacker accessed names, birthdays, addresses, banking information, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, patient histories, and treatment and diagnosis records, among other information.
“This personal information was exfiltrated (removed from Broward Health’s systems), however, there is no evidence the information was actually misused,” the hospital system said in a statement.
The DOJ also asked the hospital to not make the data breach public right away “to ensure that the notification does not compromise the ongoing law enforcement investigation,” Broward Health said.
Broward Health operates more than 30 health care locations in the Broward County area in southeast Florida.
The Hill has reached out to Broward Health for more information.
by Wesley Smith, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
The Biden Administration wants to pay doctors to create office “anti-racism plans” that could soon bring full blown critical race theory into your examining room...
What’s that you say? You didn’t hear about Congressional legislation to that effect? That’s because there is no such law. Rather, the idea was pushed quietly into implementation by the blob-like federal bureaucracy that exercises primary control over the details and minutia of federal law.
Despite what you may have been taught in high school government class, federal statutes do not provide the specifics that will apply once a bill becomes law. Instead, legislation merely establishes a skeleton outline, usually directing the Secretary of this or that Department to write the details after the bill has passed through the arcane rule making process. In other words, the contemporary administrative state run by the executive branch has substantial quasi-legislative authority never dreamed of by our Founding Fathers.
There are few limitations to rule making other than that the regulation must be relevant to, and consistent with, the governing statue. But laws are often so vaguely written, that isn’t difficult. Moreover, the promulgated rules are where the devil in the details of federal law is to be found.
How do we know what has been proposed or promulgated by the bureaucrats? All rules—whether preliminary or finalized—are published in a gargantuan volume called the Federal Register.
Oh good. That means we can just look them up, right?
Well, sure: In theory. But good luck trying. Each year more than 70,000 pages of very small print are published in the FR. Imagine digging through that eye-glazing text! Talk about needles and haystacks.
Yes, there is a modicum of societal input in rule making. But it is very indirect. When a new rule is proposed, time is allowed for public comments that—in theory and sometimes in fact—influence the bureaucrats who write and promulgate the rule. Bureaucrats may also attend meetings with “stake holders” about the contents of proposed rules.
But like everything else in Washington, D.C., this administrative process is highly political. Whether commenters have any impact on the final rule usually depends on their political clout and/or whether they are allies of the sitting administration, not policy acumen. Needless to say, individual citizens rarely know what is going on, much less, have a meaningful chance to directly participate in the process.
Alright, enough dismal civics.
Here is what the new rules on Medicare payments to doctors—that begins on page 64996 of the 2021 FR and ends on page 66031—states about the anti-racism plan bonus: In Appendix 2—are your eyes rolling back in your head yet?—doctors are offered a percentage of their Medicare income “to create and implement an anti-racist plan.”
Among other consequences, this means establishing an anti-racist bureaucracy within physicians’ offices (my emphasis):
“The plan should include a clinic-wide review of existing tools and policies, such as value statements or clinical practice guidelines, to ensure that they include and are aligned with a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of race as a political and social construct, not a physiological one.”
In other words, the rule states quite specifically that the plan isn’t about medicine. And it isn’t about science. Rather, it furthers naked ideology and insinuating very woke politics into the clinical setting.
“The plan should also identify ways in which issues and gaps identified in the review can be addressed and should include target goals and milestones for addressing prioritized issues and gaps …. The … eligible clinician or practice can also consider including in their plan ongoing training on anti-racism and/or other processes to support identifying explicit and implicit biases in patient care and addressing historic health inequities experienced by people of color.”
Think of the money to be made by leftist anti-racist trainers and organizers, which is part of the point.
Moreover, the call for “anti-racism” could be interpreted as calling for discrimination in medical settings against people who are not of color. For example, Ibram X. Kendi, the intellectual leader of the Anti-Racist Movement wrote in his book “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” “The only remedy to racial discrimination is antiracist discrimination.”
This invidious thinking has seeped into the medical establishment. Consider a relevant advocacy column entitled “Advancing President Biden’s Equity Agenda,” published last April in the New England Journal of Medicine. “To promote equity,” psychiatrist Neil K. Aggarwal wrote, “the Biden administration should distribute resources differentially in order to benefit groups that are persistently disadvantaged.”
That would be to pit some of us against others of us in our own doctor’s office. This obsession with differences—ever more thinly sliced—isn’t healthy. And it isn’t right.
All patients should be treated equally. No patient should be considered “favored” or “disfavored.” Everyone should receive optimal care. But such equality isn’t within the value system that “anti-racism” generally—and the new rule, specifically—promotes.
It is no surprise that the Biden administration has gone woke. But the real danger against true equality isn’t in the president’s speeches but in the power of the bureaucracy swamp. Indeed, what other “equity” landmines are being laid quietly within the hundreds of thousands of pages of the Federal Register?
Today, the bureaucrats are offering doctors a bonus to enlist in the “anti-racism” cause. Tomorrow, they may make critical race theory mandatory in the medical office. And we probably won’t know until the deed is done. This much is sure: Pushing “equity” in healthcare is a prescription for tearing this country apart.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-wants-woke-your-doctor
