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With Extra Vaccines Secured, Biden Warns of Hurdles to Come

With More Vaccines Secured, Biden Warns of Hurdles to Come

WASHINGTON – The Biden government said Thursday it had received an additional 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, enough to vaccinate every American adult, but President Biden warned logistical hurdles would most likely mean many Americans would still be around by the end of the year will not be vaccinated summer.

The extra doses add up to a 50 percent increase in the vaccine and give administration the number of doses Mr Biden said last month would serve 300 million people by the end of summer. But getting those shots into people’s arms will still be difficult. Both vaccines are two doses three to four weeks apart. Mr. Biden lamented the “gigantic” logistical challenge he faced while performing at the National Institutes of Health. He also openly expressed frustration with the previous administration.

“It’s one thing to have the vaccine,” said Mr Biden. “It’s another thing to have vaccines.”

The Department of Health and Human Services said Pfizer and Moderna would each provide 300 million doses in “regular increments” by the end of July.

The administration aims for a gradual process. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease expert, predicted Thursday morning that any American could look for a vaccine as early as April in an “open season” that would expand availability beyond priority categories.

“Until we get to April, I’ll call it, to put it better, the ‘open season’,” said Dr. Fauci in an interview with NBC’s “Today”. “Namely, virtually anyone and everyone in any category could start getting vaccinated.”

But the problem could be giving doses to people who aren’t readily looking for them.

Mr Biden has carefully avoided his White House being consumed by criticism of his predecessor, but on Thursday he targeted Donald J. Trump directly for saying he failed to put in place a procedure for mass vaccination. The president, who said he had promised to speak openly with Americans about the challenges of the pandemic, accused Mr Trump of creating a significant one by not overseeing the creation of an optimized vaccine distribution program. “The vaccination program was in much, much worse shape than my team and I expected,” said Biden.

“While scientists have done their job discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I will be very frank about this – did not do his job to prepare for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” added Biden.

“It was a big mess,” he said. “It will take time to mend to be blunt with you.”

Health officials in the Trump administration have pushed these proposals back, referring to hundreds of briefings that Department of Health and Human Services officials have offered to the incoming health team, including vaccine assignment and distribution.

The highly decentralized vaccine distribution and administration plans that give state and local health authorities authority after the doses have been dispensed were worked out with staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense.

Officials involved in the last government’s distribution plans said late last year that outside of the first few weeks, when they carefully checked the flow of reserves for the second dose, they always planned to ship cans as soon as they were available, and that they never intended to store these doses.

The agreement for an additional 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccine helps fulfill a promise made by Mr Biden in January to increase the supply to cover a larger segment of the population. He said at the time that the government made this deal with the two manufacturers as part of its larger promise that around 300 million Americans would get a dose of the vaccine by the end of summer or early fall.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021 at 9:51 am ET

On Thursday, Mr Biden said his government had “now bought enough vaccine to vaccinate all Americans”.

Dr. Nicole Lurie, who was the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama, said the hesitation of the vaccine could affect how fast some Americans who want to be vaccinated could get their shot, but that more care, more work would mean to get vaccines people.

“We’re going to reach more and more people, and more people need to make extra efforts to reach them,” she said. “One has to hope that given the growing supply, the public will still have great demand for vaccines. This is really the unknown. “

The government had already received 400 million doses of the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the two companies approved for emergency distribution – doses expected by the end of June. Mr Biden said Thursday that companies would now ship them by the end of May.

A third manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve its single-dose emergency vaccine. That decision could be made by the end of the month and allow the vaccine to be distributed in the first week of March. However, the company is still trying to show that it can manufacture the vaccine on a large scale at its Baltimore facility.

Federal officials have so far refused to say how much of this vaccine will be ready for distribution once it clears regulatory hurdles, but they caution to expect a spate of new doses from Johnson & Johnson soon.

“We haven’t found that the level of manufacturing allows us to have as much vaccine as we think is necessary,” Andy Slavitt, a senior White House pandemic advisor, said recently.

To date, only about 10 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine. On Thursday, the CDC announced that about 34.7 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 11.2 million people who were fully vaccinated.

The speed of vaccinations has accelerated steadily over the past few weeks. The number of daily recordings now averages 1.5 million compared to 1.1 million two weeks ago. At this rate, Mr Biden will easily fulfill his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.

According to state and federal health officials, the main barrier to vaccinating more people at this time is the lack of care. The administration has been looking for a way to speed up production, including a possible breakthrough where Moderna would fill its vials with more cans and potentially get out millions more cans earlier.

However, Mr. Biden faces a variety of long-standing manufacturing constraints, including limited free space around the world to manufacture more vaccines and the delicate and complex nature of vaccine manufacturing.

White House officials have indicated that their work increases weekly vaccine supplies by 28 percent. However, these doses are due to an expected increase in manufacturing.

Unlike the previous administration, the White House pandemic team has been briefing governors on planned care in three-week increments so state health officials will better know how to plan ahead.

And they took a much more aggressive approach by using federal resources to shoot guns. The White House announced this week that it is building five new vaccination centers, including three in Texas and two in New York, specifically designed to vaccinate people of color. The government also said it plans to deliver 1 million doses of vaccine to 250 government-supported community health centers in underserved neighborhoods. A new vaccination program for federal pharmacies began this week.

And on Friday, the government announced that it would send over 1,000 active troops to Covid-19 vaccination centers across the country operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has announced that it will set up around 100 vaccination sites nationwide this month and spend $ 1 billion on vaccination measures, including community vaccination sites.

Sharon LaFraniere and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed to the coverage.

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White Home secures offers for 200 million extra doses

White House secures deals for 200 million more doses

President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11, 2021.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden announced Thursday that his administration had signed contracts for an additional 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the US total to 600 million.

“We just signed the final contracts for 100 million more Moderna and 100 million more Pfizer vaccines just this afternoon,” said Biden on Thursday during a tour of the National Institutes of Health in late July.

The Washington Post reported the news first. Previously, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain appeared to confirm the news and retweet the Post story from his official White House Twitter account.

Since both Pfizer and Moderna approved vaccines require two doses three to four weeks apart, a total of 600 million doses would be enough to vaccinate 300 million people.

Biden is trying to accelerate the pace of vaccination in the US after a slower-than-expected rollout under the administration of former President Donald Trump. Around 34.7 million out of around 331 million Americans have received at least their first dose of a Covid vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 11.2 million of those people have already got their second shot.

The schedule for delivering the additional doses was not immediately clear.

Each company will leverage US-based manufacturing capabilities to “fill, finish, and ship vials while the bulk goods are manufactured,” according to a separate statement from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Pfizer has already signed a contract with the US to supply 200 million cans. The company announced earlier this month that it plans to complete these shipments by May, earlier than originally forecast in July. Moderna also has a US contract for 200 million cans.

States have complained that the demand for vaccines is exceeding supply. The government previously stated that it is using the Defense Manufacturing Act to help Pfizer meet its manufacturing goals for its vaccine.

In addition to securing more doses for states, the Biden government is using the military to aid in the administration of doses and establishing mass vaccination centers in the United States.

On Wednesday, the government announced it would work with Texas officials to build three new community vaccination centers in Dallas, Arlington and Houston. A few days earlier, the government had announced that it would send troops on active duty to California to help vaccination centers for Covid-19 employees.

U.S. officials also hope vaccine supplies will increase after Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine is emergency approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which could happen as early as this month. The FDA scheduled a meeting of its Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products on February 26th to discuss the vaccine. The US could approve the vaccine the next day.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August that it had signed a deal with Janssen, J & J’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, worth approximately $ 1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. The deal gives the federal government the opportunity to order another 200 million cans, according to the announcement.

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175 Pediatric Illness Specialists: It’s Secure to Open Elementary Colleges Now

175 Pediatric Disease Experts: It’s Safe to Open Elementary Schools Now

Many of the usual school opening requirements – including vaccines for teachers or students and low rates of infection in the community – are not required to safely teach children in person, according to a consensus among pediatric infectious disease experts in a new survey.

Instead, the 175 experts – mostly pediatricians with a focus on public health – largely agreed that it is safe for schools to now be open to elementary school students for full-time and in-person tuition. This also applies in communities where Covid-19 infections are widespread, provided that basic safety measures are in place. Most important are universal masking, physical distancing, adequate ventilation and avoidance of activities in large groups.

The experts were interviewed by the New York Times last week. Most believe that the level of virus spread in a community is not a key indicator of whether schools should be open, although many districts still rely on this metric. Schools should only close if there are Covid-19 cases in the school itself, most said.

“There is no situation where schools can only be opened if they have evidence of transmission in the school,” said Dr. David Rosen, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Washington University in St. Louis.

The risk of dropping out of school is far greater, said many experts. “The mental health crisis caused by school closings will be a worse pandemic than Covid,” said Dr. Uzma Hasan, Head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey.

These responses are largely in line with current federal guidelines that make no mention of vaccines and reflect key scientific evidence that schools are not a primary source of child or adult spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to publish new recommendations on how to run schools safely on Friday, and the Biden administration has given priority to opening schools.

However, the expert consensus in the survey contradicts the position of certain policy makers, school administrators, parent groups and teacher unions. Some in these groups have indicated that they do not want to return to school buildings next fall if it is likely that teachers can be vaccinated, although not most of the students. Some districts have put up stiff resistance to the reopening, especially in large cities where teachers have threatened to strike if they are called back to school buildings.

Some experts agreed that open schools pose a risk, especially for the adults working there, saying that many parts of the country have not yet controlled the virus enough to be opened safely.

“If we wanted schools to reopen safely, we as a society would have had to work hard to keep transmission rates low and to invest resources in schools,” said Dr. Leana Wen, Emergency Doctor and Visiting Professor of Health Policy at George Washington University.

About half of the country’s students are still studying from home, and while the majority of districts have at least some face-to-face learning and are trying to reopen this spring, many students offer just a few hours a day or a few days a week .

The mismatch between the experts ‘preferred guidelines and school opening rules in many districts reflects political considerations and union demands, but it also changes scientists’ understanding of the virus. Many school policies were developed months ago before there was mounting evidence that Covid-19 did not spread easily in schools where basic safety precautions were in place. The guidelines could change again, they warned: Almost everyone raised concerns that new coronavirus variants could disrupt schools’ plans to be open in the spring or fall.

More than two-thirds of respondents said they had school-age children, and half had children in school at least temporarily. Overall, they were more likely to support opening their own schools. About 85 percent of those in communities where schools were open all day said their district made the right call, while only a third of those in places where schools were still closed made the right choice.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

“Closing the school in spring 2020 was the right decision: we didn’t know much about Covid at the time and didn’t know what role children could play in the transmission,” said Dr. Mitul Kapadia, director of pediatric physical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “We know now, and we know schools can open safely. Fear guides decisions even against the guidelines and recommendations of the medical and public health communities. “

The point of most agreement was to require masks for everyone. All respondents said it was important and many said it was a simple solution that made the need for other conditions for opening less important.

“What works in healthcare, masks, will work in schools,” said Dr. Danielle Zerr, professor and director of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Washington. “Children are good at wearing masks!”

Half of the panel said a full return to school with no precautions – no masks, full classrooms, and all restored activity – would require all adults and children in the community to have access to vaccinations. (Vaccines have not yet been tested in children and will most likely not be available until 2022.)

But not everyone agreed that younger children need to be vaccinated to return to pre-pandemic school life. A fifth said a full reopening could occur without precaution once adults in the community and students were vaccinated, and 12 percent said it could happen once vaccines are available to all adults in the community.

The experts also questioned another strategy used by many districts that are open or due to open this spring: part-time opening for small and permanent cohorts of students who take turns participating in class schedules to reduce class size and the To maximize the distance between people. Only a third said it was very important for schools to do this, although three quarters said students should be six feet apart for some or all of the time. Three quarters said schools should avoid crowds, such as in hallways or cafeterias.

With universal masking, “school transfers are close to zero and cohorts are not required,” said Dr. Jeanne Ann Noble, Emergency Medicine Physician and Director of Covid Response at the University of California at San Francisco.

Limiting school hours increased other risks, such as disrupting children’s social development, disrupting family routines, and increasing the likelihood of children being exposed to a larger group of people outside of school.

The experts expressed deep concern about other risks for staying home students, including depression, hunger, anxiety, isolation, and learning loss.

“Children’s learning and emotional and in some cases physical health are severely affected by early school leaving,” said Dr. Lisa Abuogi, a pediatric emergency physician at the University of Colorado, and gave her personal opinions. “I spend some of my clinical time in the emergency room and the psychological distress we see in school-related children is no longer current.”

Respondents came from membership lists of three groups: the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the Decision Sciences for Child Health Collaborative, and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ sub-specialty group in Epidemiology, Public Health, and Evidence. Some individual scientists also replied. Almost all of them were doctors, and more than a quarter of them had degrees in epidemiology or public health. Most worked in academia and about a quarter in clinical settings, and most said their daily work was closely related to the pandemic.

The survey asked experts about various strategies schools use to protect students and staff. The experts said many such measures would have some value, but identified two as the most important: wearing masks and distancing themselves.

Other widely used measures – such as frequent disinfection of buildings and surfaces, temperature controls, or the use of Plexiglas partitions – were seen as less important. A quarter said routine surveillance tests of students and staff are very important for opening schools.

“Masks are key,” said Dr. Noble. “Other interventions create a false sense of security.”

Many states have tied openings to community dissemination measures in the school, such as: B. the positivity rate of tests, the rate of new infections or the rate of hospital stays. But 80 percent of the experts said school districts shouldn’t base reopening decisions on infection data across the county. You should focus on virus cases in school.

Many districts have opened or are considering opening up to younger students before older ones. Research has shown that infection and spread in adolescent children become more similar to adults. The Biden administration has designed its reopening plans for children in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Just over half of pediatric infectious disease experts said fifth grade should be the cutoff when schools are partially open. Only 17 percent said the eighth grade should be. Despite the greater risk faced by high school students, many complained about the long-term effects of a year of extreme isolation on teenagers.

Although these experts specialized in children’s physical health, many concluded that the risks to mental health, social skills, and education outweighed the risks of the virus. The future prospects of the students, said Dr. Susan Lipton, director of pediatric infectious diseases at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, are “torpedoed without the best academics, interaction with inspiring teachers who become mentors, clubs, sports and other opportunities to shine.”

“This is a generation devastating,” she said.

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‘Zero Covid’? We’re not at that stage but, WHO says

Pfizer to supply up to 40 million Covid vaccine doses to Covax global program

A nurse prepares the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on January 10, 2021 at a vaccination center in Sarcelles near Paris.

ALAIN JOCARD | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – As coronavirus vaccines continue to roll out in major economies around the world, attention is again turning to current lockdown strategies to eradicate new cases of the virus.

Some experts have called for a “zero-covid” strategy that advocates very strict lockdowns, social restrictions and travel bans to eradicate all cases of the virus before public and business life can be reopened.

Countries like New Zealand and Australia have adopted this approach, closing their countries early in the pandemic to prevent new cases. Citing their success in containing the pandemic, some experts in Ireland are also advocating a “zero-covid” approach, although given Northern Ireland’s open border with the rest of the UK, there is disagreement on whether such a policy would work there

On Thursday, World Health Organization experts said it was too early and difficult in practice to consider a “zero-covid” approach.

“Elimination is basically something we want for every disease, for every pathogen, and it can be a very powerful incentive to work. But whether we’re at the stage now – setting goals for a zero-covid strategy – is still open another ball game, “said Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, at a press conference on Thursday.

“First and foremost, we need to see how people’s behavior, how they adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions, adds up to the timing of policy decisions when vaccination is introduced, and how the pandemic is brought under control.”

Zero Covid strategies were based on banning inbound travel, but some countries were easier to restrict or “isolate from international travel” than others, Kluge said. Many countries in Europe have banned all but essential travel during the lockdown. Forced hotel quarantines for travelers to the UK are now on the horizon, despite critics saying the move is too little and too late.

The introduction of vaccinations is creating a silver lining for lockdowns and, along with restrictions on public life, has slowly seen a decline in new cases and hospital admissions.

Kluge said the European region, which includes 53 countries for WHO, has seen a decrease in new cases in the past four weeks and deaths in the past fourteen days. Still, more than 1 million cases have been reported in the European region every week, Kluge said, and the spread of new variants remains a major problem.

Vaccine manufacturers are already working on second generation footage to target variants of the virus. Concern and caution about mutations are causing governments to be on the alert when it comes to lifting bans.

On the one hand, Germany extended its lockdown until the beginning of March amid concerns about the spread of a variant first discovered in Great Britain. With this variant, which according to the WHO has now been reported in more than 80 countries, a leading British scientist said it was on the right track, “most likely to sweep the world”.

Unlocking “must be gradual and safe,” said Kluge, adding, “the biggest mistake is lowering our guard (too early).”

Dr. Catherine Smallwood, chief emergency officer on WHO’s Europe team, said the virus would take advantage of easing restrictions too early.

“This virus is going to take every chance we give it to spread quickly, and it’s going to spread much faster than we think. … Every time we lift a restriction, every time we do, it will open a part of our society that balance towards the favor of the virus. “

She warned that transmission rates would remain high and that lowering the transmission rates would aid vaccination programs.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is barred from Instagram over false coronavirus claims.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is barred from Instagram over false coronavirus claims.

Instagram on Wednesday deleted the report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and prominent anti-vaccine activist, for providing false information related to the coronavirus.

“We removed this account because we repeatedly shared debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement.

Mr. Kennedy, the son of former Senator and US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, worked as an environmental attorney for decades but is now better known as a crusader against vaccines. A 2019 study found that two groups, including his nonprofit now called Children’s Health Defense, had funded more than half of the Facebook ads spreading misinformation about vaccines.

During the pandemic, he found an even wider audience on platforms like Instagram, which he had 800,000 followers on. Although Mr Kennedy has said he is not against vaccines while they are safe, he regularly advocates discredited links between vaccines and autism, arguing that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to get vaccinated against it.

Facebook is becoming more aggressive in its efforts to stamp out misinformation about vaccines, and this week it says it would remove posts with flawed claims about the coronavirus, coronavirus vaccines, and vaccines in general, whether it was paid advertisements or user-generated Posts. In addition to Mr. Kennedy’s Instagram account, the company said it removed eight more Instagram accounts and Facebook pages on Wednesday as part of its updated policy.

They did not include Mr Kennedy’s Facebook page, which was still active early Thursday and making many of the same unfounded claims against more than 300,000 followers. The company said it has not automatically disabled accounts on its platforms and that there are no plans to delete Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook account “at this point.”

Children’s Health Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Members of Mr. Kennedy’s family have spoken out against his anti-vaccination efforts, including a brother, sister and niece who accused him of “dangerous misinformation” in a column they wrote for Politico in 2019 . Another niece, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a New York Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical Center doctor, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in December challenging his claims.

“I love my uncle Bobby,” she wrote. “I admire him for many reasons, including his decades of struggle for a cleaner environment. But when it comes to vaccines, he’s wrong. “

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5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens February 11, 2021

5 things to know before the stock market opens February 11, 2021

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:

1. Dow aims to contribute to Wednesday’s record high

Traders work on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

Dow futures rose Thursday, the day after the 30-stock average hit an intraday all-time high and closed on a record in a volatile session. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq failed to hold their all-time highs during the day on Wednesday and closed a little lower.

The Department of Labor will be absent at 8:30 a.m. CET with its weekly report on new jobless claims. Economists expect 760,000 new jobless claims claims in the past week. That would be 19,000 less than the previous week, which at 779,000 was the lowest initial damage since late November.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said monetary policy must remain “patiently accommodative” on Wednesday to support the economy, which is still facing labor market challenges. The employment picture is “far away,” said the central bank chief to the Economic Club of New York.

2. PepsiCo exceeds expectations; Uber has mixed results

Pepsi soft drinks are on display in a supermarket in San Francisco, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Investors once again focused on the result. Disney tops the list of major companies reporting quarterly results after Thursday’s closing bell. Before the market opened, PepsiCo reported earnings of $ 1.47 per share for the fourth quarter, a penny better than estimated. Revenue rose 8.8% to $ 22.46 billion, exceeding expectations. The PepsiCo share fell slightly in the pre-market.

A traveler checks his phone next to an Uber sign at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California on August 20, 2020.

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

Uber shares fell 4% on the Thursday prior to going public, the morning after the company reported an unexpectedly small loss of 54 cents per share in the fourth quarter. However, sales fell 16% to a below-expected $ 3.17 billion. Uber’s hail business was slowly recovering while the delivery business was booming.

3. Cannabis stocks jump into a Reddit trade reminiscent of GameStop

Dry cannabis flowers in the packaging room at Aphria Inc.’s diamond factory in Leamington, Ontario, Canada on Wednesday, January 13, 2021.

Anne Sakkab | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cannabis stocks soared as the Reddit crowd, which started GameStop, stepped in. Tilray shares rose nearly 51% on Wednesday, seeing the stock jump more than 670% year-to-date. Tilray’s short stake wasn’t nearly as high as GameStop’s, according to FactSet, at 22.5% of the stocks available for trading at the end of January. Tilary gained another 10% on the Thursday before the market. Tilray is no stranger to a short squeeze rally. The stock gained more than 1,400% between July and September 2018, but those gains didn’t last.

4. Dating app company Bumble will start trading after going public

When 31-year-old Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd goes public with her dating app company on Thursday, she will become known not only for her youth, but also as one of the few founders to take her company off the ground. Bumble, whose board of directors is 73% women, valued its offering at $ 43 per share Wednesday night, raised $ 2.2 billion and valued Bumble at around $ 8 billion. The stock market reaction will serve as the litmus test for companies founded by women, which make up only 7.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs. That’s an all-time high, but it’s still an amazing low.

5. House Impeachment Manager to continue her case against Trump

The property managers will set out their case against former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment on Thursday. Trump’s lawyers are expected to start their defense by the end of the week. The terrifying security video of last month’s deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol, including scenes of rioters looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then Vice-President Mike Pence, was unveiled on Wednesday as a key exhibit by Democratic lawmakers pursuing the case, why Trump should be condemned to initiate the siege.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow CNBC’s blogs about the markets, the pandemic and Trump’s impeachment.

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Semaglutide Brings Vital Weight Loss in Overweight Sufferers

Semaglutide Brings Significant Weight Loss in Obese Patients

For the first time, a drug has been shown to be so effective against obesity that patients can avoid many of its worst effects, including diabetes, researchers reported Wednesday.

Novo Nordisk’s drug Semaglutide is already marketed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. In a clinical study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago tested semaglutide at a much higher dose as an anti-obesity drug.

Nearly 2,000 participants in 129 centers in 16 countries injected semaglutide or a placebo weekly for 68 weeks. Those who received the drug lost an average of nearly 15 percent of their body weight, compared with 2.4 percent of those who received the placebo.

More than a third of the participants who received the drug lost more than 20 percent of their weight. Symptoms of diabetes and pre-diabetes improved in many patients.

These results far exceed the weight loss seen in clinical trials with other anti-obesity drugs, experts say. The drug is a “game changer,” said Dr. Robert F. Kushner, an obesity researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the study. “This marks the beginning of a new era of effective obesity treatments.”

Dr. Clifford Rosen of the Maine Medical Center Research Institute, who was not involved in the study, said, “I think it has great potential for weight loss.” The gastrointestinal symptoms among the participants were “really marginal – nothing like weight loss drugs in the past,” added Dr. Rosen, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and co-author of an editorial that accompanied the study.

For decades, scientists have been looking for ways to help a growing number of people with obesity. Five obesity drugs currently available have side effects that limit their use. The most effective phentermine causes an average weight loss of 7.5 percent and can only be taken for a short time. After stopping, this amount of weight is also regained.

The most effective treatment to date is bariatric surgery, which allows people to lose an average of 25 to 30 percent of their body weight, noted Dr. Louis Aronne, an obesity researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, who advises Novo Nordisk and studies semaglutide.

However, surgery is an invasive solution that permanently changes the digestive system. Only 1 percent of those who qualify do the procedure. Instead, most obese people try diet after diet with disappointing results.

The semaglutide study confirms what scientists already know, said Dr. Kushner: Willpower is not enough. In the new study, the participants who received the placebo and the diet and exercise counseling could not find any significant difference in weight.

In general, insurers have refused to pay for the weight loss drugs on the market. Semaglutide is likely to be expensive. The lower dose used to treat diabetes has an average retail price of nearly $ 1,000 per month. (Insurers usually pay for diabetes medication, Dr. Kushner noted.)

Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a member of the Novo Nordisk advisory board, said semaglutide’s effectiveness is “phenomenal” and the trial results may lead insurers to cover it.

Semaglutide is a synthetic version of a naturally occurring hormone that acts on appetite centers in the brain and intestines, causing feelings of satiety. A high-dose regimen of the drug hasn’t been studied long enough to see if it has serious long-term effects.

And it is expected that patients will have to take it for a lifetime to prevent weight loss from returning.

Qiana Mosely, who lives in Chicago, has tried dieting and drugs for years to lose weight, but to no avail. Then Ms. Mosely took the semaglutide study and lost 40 pounds, about 15 percent of her weight.

Ms. Mosely did not know until recently whether she was receiving the drug or the placebo. Although she tried to eat well and exercise, her weight “dropped too quickly,” she said. “It had to be the drugs.”

She said she didn’t experience any side effects. But when the study ended and she stopped receiving the drug, the weight came back. “I was so sad,” she said. She will endeavor to resume taking the medicine as soon as it becomes available.

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Nursing properties with extra minority residents had extra Covid deaths: Examine

Nursing homes with more minority residents had more Covid deaths: Study

Derede McAlpin is holding a photo of her mother, Sara McAlpin, 92, who was diagnosed with Covid-19 in Rockville, MD.

Katherine Frey | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Nursing homes with more minority residents reported more than three times as many deaths in Covid as those with more white residents, a large study published on Wednesday found.

The University of Chicago researchers examined 13,312 U.S. nursing homes and analyzed Covid data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from May through December. They found that nursing homes where more than 40% of their residents were black or Spanish reported 3.3 times as many deaths and cases in Covid as nursing homes with more white residents.

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are hardest hit by the pandemic. Less than 1% of Americans live in such facilities, according to the CDC, but they have caused nearly 40% of all deaths in the United States, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

It is well documented that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the ethnic and racial minorities in the United States. President Joe Biden and his administration have vowed to ensure justice throughout the vaccine distribution process and to prioritize color communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

The new study, published on JAMA Network Open, shows how these differences affect nursing homes and has policy implications for vaccine distribution.

The differences were due to some historical factors, the researchers said. For example, minority residents in nursing homes are more likely to live in large facilities that are for-profit, rely more on Medicaid, and “have shortcomings in care,” the researchers said. They added that “Nursing homes in the US are very segregated”

An Empress EMS paramedic loads a suspected COVID-19 patient into an ambulance on April 7, 2020 in Yonkers, New York.

John Moore | Getty Images

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, racial differences in the quality of home care were known to be common,” the authors wrote. “Compared to whites, blacks are more likely to be admitted to the lowest quality nursing homes that have lower nursing staffing rates, more serious regulatory deficiencies, and a higher likelihood of being excluded from the Medicaid program.”

The researchers, health economists Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka, added that the pandemic is a “perfect storm” for residents of nursing homes.

“With minority communities having the highest COVID-19 infection rates and nursing homes in these communities generally being of lower quality, non-white nursing home residents are in the eye of this perfect storm,” they wrote.

The study finds that the death toll of Covid in U.S. nursing homes is likely to decline soon with the introduction of the vaccine. The CDC recommends that states give the vaccine to residents and long-term care workers as a priority before moving on to other segments of the population.

The Federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care program allowed states to tap into pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to help distribute the vaccine. As part of that program, more than 5 million doses have been given to residents and long-term care workers since Tuesday, according to the CDC.

“As vaccination progresses, it will be important for policy makers to consider existing inequalities to ensure that the vaccine distribution process includes a special effort to reach color communities,” the researchers wrote in the study.

They noted some limitations to their study. Institution-level data is publicly available through the CDC, but comprehensive individual-level data is not available. Such data “is needed to understand whether there are intra-facility differences in addition to differences between facilities,” they said.

They added that as of May, the data they analyzed were reported by nursing homes themselves, omitting many of the cases and deaths that had previously occurred. And they said the federal data “didn’t allow any racial classifications other than white, black, and Hispanic.” More detailed data would have enabled further analysis of the data across different racial groups.

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Health

People Should Guarantee Masks Match Snugly or Double Up, C.D.C Says

Americans Must Ensure Masks Fit Snugly or Double Up, C.D.C Says

On Wednesday, federal health officials urged Americans to save their masks and take measures to tighten them – or even cover a cloth mask with a cloth – saying new research had shown masks to increase the spread of the coronavirus reduce.

Recent laboratory experiments found that virus transmission could be reduced by 96.5 percent if Americans wore tight-fitting surgical masks or a combination of cloth and surgical mask. When announcing the results, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells Americans to wear a “well-fitting mask.”

“With cases, hospitalizations and deaths still very high, now is not the time to reset mask requirements,” she said. “The bottom line is that masks work, and they work when they fit well and are worn properly.”

Masking is now mandatory on federal properties as well as on national and international transports. Studies conducted in households in Beijing, hair salons in Missouri, and aboard an aircraft carrier in Guam have shown that “any mask is better than none,” said Dr. John T. Brooks, Chief Covid Response Physician at the CDC and lead author of the agency’s new masking research.

“Wearing a mask reduces the spread and new infections are falling in communities where masks are used,” said Dr. Brooks.

While masks reduce the droplets and aerosols exhaled by infected wearers and protect uninfected wearers, air leaking from the edges of a mask can reduce its effectiveness. The agency’s new laboratory experiments showed how the problem can be fixed.

One option is to wear a cloth mask over a surgical mask, the agency said. The alternative is to “knot and tuck” the surgical mask closer to the face – that is, the two strands of the ear loops are knotted together where they are attached to the edge of the mask, and then the extra fabric is folded over and over flattened the mask edge and tuck it in for a tighter seal.

The agency’s experiments relied on three-layer surgical and cloth masks, and only one type of each mask was tested. Other combinations – such as doubling up on cloth masks or wearing two surgical masks, or putting one cloth mask on top of a surgical mask – were not tested.

The advice also arrives after states begin lifting measures to slow the transmission of the virus. About three dozen states have masking requirements, but on Monday Iowa ended its mandate and joined Mississippi and North Dakota, which it did months ago.

States are rushing to resume business and reopen schools. For example, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that fans would be allowed to return to sporting events and concerts with limited capacity and mandatory testing and seating in stadiums and arenas. In New York City, indoor dining can resume on Friday at 25 percent capacity.

Virus-related deaths, which increased sharply in the US in November and remain high, appear to be steadily decreasing. New cases and hospital stays also fell last month.

But the CDC has warned that the new variants, even if cases have receded, could spike infections if Americans drop their guards. Cases of a contagious variant of the virus, first found in the UK, are doubling in the US about every 10 days. The CDC warned last month that it could become the dominant variant in the nation by March.

Until the vast majority of adults are vaccinated, “we want to contain this,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. Masks are an effective and easy way to avoid another disastrous “roller coaster ride,” he added.

Updated

Apr. 10, 2021, 9:41 am ET

“The fewer opportunities we give this virus to reproduce, the less likely it is that mutations will occur and the less likely we are to get new variants,” said Dr. Conductor.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, is the co-author of a paper on improving the effectiveness of masks that inspired the CDC to conduct the new research.

“We want to do our best to contain the transmission with all elements: masking, distancing, hand hygiene, ventilation,” she said. “If we reduce transmission and mass vaccinate at the same time, the virus has no way of evading the vaccine.”

The CDC outlined a few additional options for improving the effectiveness of masks, including using a mask fitter – a face-matched frame – over a mask. Recent studies have shown that fitters can increase protection against virus-containing aerosols by 90 percent or more.

Surprisingly, the agency may also suggest that people consider wearing a sleeve made of pure nylon stocking material around their necks and pulling it onto a drape or surgical mask.

The CDC’s recommendations were based in part on ideas from Dr. Gandhi and Linsey Marr, an aerosol transfer expert at Virginia Tech. The two have recommended a surgical mask covered with a tight-fitting cloth mask, or a three-layer cloth mask consisting of two outer layers of tightly woven fabric that encircles the face and a middle layer of filter material, such as vacuum bag material.

Both the tight fit and filtration are important, said Dr. Marr. Even with an N95 respirator such as that used by health care workers, a good fit is essential.

While a growing number of Americans say they support the wearing of masks, opposition persists in some counties and regions. Dr. Marr said she expected the CDC’s new advice to be ridiculed.

“I’m sure the resistance fighters will say, ‘What’s next? Three masks? Four masks? Asked Dr. Marr. “But there’s a lot of interest from people who want to know how good their masks are and how they can improve them. People want the best possible protection. “

The CDC experiments simulated the production of aerosols from cough and estimated their absorption. While an untied surgical mask blocked 42 percent of the particles and a cloth mask alone blocked 44.3 percent, combining a cloth mask over a surgical mask blocked 92.5 percent of the cough particles, found Dr. Brooks and his colleagues.

When both the source of the aerosols and the exposed form were fitted with either the combination of masks or the knotted and hidden surgical mask, exposure to the recipient was reduced by 96.4 percent and 95.9 percent, respectively.

Neither method was perfect: knotting and tucking together makes the surface area of ​​the mask smaller and potentially more suitable for people with smaller faces, noted Dr. Brooks.

Likewise, the fabric and surgical mask combination works well, but makes the mask thicker and can make it difficult for some people to breathe. The extra layers can also obstruct peripheral vision and increase the risk of tripping or falling.

Breathability is also important, said Dr. Marr. “If you put too many things on top of each other that make it difficult to breathe, it’s counterproductive: it’s more likely that air will find gaps to get in,” she said.

Dr. Brooks emphasized that masking, as Americans currently practice, is not “insufficient”. However, the new council offers “the opportunity to take it to the next level”.

“Now we are concerned about forms of the virus that could transmit more efficiently or interfere with the usefulness of existing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines,” he added. “We need to improve our game to slow the spread of the virus and its development.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington.

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Health

Biden DOJ reverses Trump-era place

Biden DOJ reverses Trump-era position

An Obamacare sign is seen outside the Leading Insurance Agency, which is offering plans under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) on January 28, 2021 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

The Justice Department informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it no longer considers Obamacare to be unconstitutional. This is the last reversal of the department since President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.

The Supreme Court is considering contesting Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, filed by Texas and other Republican-led states. The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump supported Texas in legal pleadings and verbal disputes in November.

California and other blue states are defending the law that gave 20 million Americans health insurance.

“After the change in administration, the Department of Justice has rethought the government’s position in these cases,” wrote Edwin Kneedler, assistant attorney general, in a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the court.

The reversal of Biden’s Justice Department was expected. Biden played a role in the implementation of monumental legislation by Congress in 2010 while serving as Vice President under then-President Barack Obama.

The case concerns Obamacare’s individual mandate provision that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine.

The Supreme Court previously upheld the individual mandate as lawful under the tax powers of Congress. After the Republicans in Congress set the penalty at $ 0 in 2017, Texas raised its challenge, arguing that the mandate was no longer a tax.

The Trump Justice Department agreed that the mandate was unconstitutional. The department also argued that if the Supreme Court scraps the individual mandate, it will have to scrap the entire Affordable Care Act.

Kneedler wrote that under Biden the Justice Department had reversed its position on both issues. The department, he wrote, believes the individual mandate determination is lawful and that the provision can be removed if the court does not find it while the rest of the law persists.

During the hearing in the case, it appeared unlikely that the judges would scrap the legislation entirely, although it was not clear whether a majority would find the individual mandate unlawful. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both Conservatives, suggested they support the separation of individual mandate provisions from the rest of the sweeping law.

Kneedler, who has served in the Justice Department under the presidents of both major political parties for more than 40 years, wrote in the letter that the ministry had not attempted to file further briefs on the case. A decision is expected in the summer.

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