Day: July 24, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs, as he faces an uphill reelection battle and criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has previously proposed most of the changes made by the executive orders he signed Friday, but this was the first time they had made it into signed executive orders. One order would allow for the legal importation of cheaper prescription drugs from countries like Canada, while another would require discounts from drug companies now captured by middlemen to be passed on to patients, Trump said. Another measure seeks to lower insulin costs, while a fourth, which may not be implemented if talks with drug companies are successful, would require Medicare to purchase drugs at the same price that other countries pay, Trump said. Executives of top drug companies have requested a meeting to discuss how they can lower drug prices, the president said. “We will see what those discussions indicate, but the agency is prepared to move forward,” said Medicare chief Seema Verma. Pharmaceutical industry weighs inThe orders received swift pushback from the pharmaceutical industry. The move was “a reckless distraction that impedes our ability to respond to the current pandemic – and those we could face in the future,” the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said in a statement. Wall Street analysts were skeptical that the orders would have much effect on drugmakers and said they could prove difficult to implement in practice. “We believe they are likely geared more towards deriving campaign talking points rather than producing tangible, material effects,” Brian Abrahams, a biotech analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note. Shares of several drugmakers ticked up as Trump outlined the plan, recovering some of the day’s losses. Congress not on boardTrump repeatedly has called for lowering the cost of prescription drugs, but Congress has not yet passed a major drug price reform. Many of the administration’s past efforts to cut drug prices, including its plan to force insurers and other health care payers to pass rebates on to patients, have stalled amid industry pushback. “Reviving a rebate reform proposal now does not address the underlying flaws – that it will drastically increase Medicare premiums for America’s seniors and most vulnerable,” the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, whose members negotiate rebates for health care payers with drugmakers, said in a statement. Paying the rebates directly to seniors in the form of discounts could cut their drug costs by as much as $30 billion, or as much as 30%, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a Friday press call. Trump is under fire for surging coronavirus cases in the United States and beset by decreasing poll numbers ahead of November 3 elections. On Friday, he also said that the White House would propose a health care bill soon but offered few details. Drugmakers often negotiate rebates or discounts on their list prices in exchange for favorable treatment from insurers. As a result, insurers and covered patients rarely pay the full list price of a drug. 
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A few weeks ago researchers at Oxford University announced promising results from early trials of their version of a COVID-19 vaccine. In early trial results on just over 1,000 volunteers, the vaccine appeared to be safe and triggered an immune response. VOA spoke with one volunteer who is participated in phase two trials. VOA’s Anna Rice reports. 
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The U.N. weather agency warned Friday that average temperatures in Siberia were 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) above average last month, a spate of exceptional heat that has fanned devastating fires in the Arctic Circle and contributed to a rapid depletion in ice sea off Russia’s Arctic coast. “The Arctic is heating more than twice as fast as the global average, impacting local populations and ecosystems and with global repercussions,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement Friday. He noted that Earth’s poles influence weather conditions far away, where hundreds of millions of people live. WMO previously cited a reading of 38 Celsius in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, which the agency has been seeking to verify as a possible record-high temperature in the Arctic Circle. It comes as fires have swept through the region, with satellite imagery showing the breadth of the area surface.  The agency says the extended heat is linked to a large “blocking pressure system” and northward swing of the jet stream that has injected warm air into the region. But WMO also pointed to a recent study by top climate scientists who found that such a rise in heat would have been nearly impossible without human-caused climate change.  WMO said information collected by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center and the U.S. National Ice Center showed the Siberian heat wave had “accelerated the ice retreat along the Arctic Russian coast, in particular since late June, leading to very low sea ice extent in the Laptev and Barents Seas.” 
 
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As he visited a London medical center to promote a flu immunization program Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to opponents of vaccinations as “nuts.”  Johnson made the off-hand comment as he chatted with nurses about the importance of a widespread flu vaccination plan as winter approaches. He said the need for such vaccinations is more vital than ever to keep the public health system from being overwhelmed with flu patients as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.   As he discussed the flu immunization program, Johnson noted the number of people who don’t vaccinate their children against childhood illnesses. He said, “There are all these anti-vaxxers now, they are nuts.” Anti-vaccination activists, a vocal group that opposes inoculations, has organized protests in the wake of the current crisis. They believe, contrary to scientific evidence, that ingredients in a vaccine can cause harm to the body. And the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about pharmaceutical industry plots regarding vaccines.  Health experts have repeatedly said there is no evidence the coronavirus was intentionally created or spread. They also insist that vaccines are not only safe, but essential to global health. The United Nations warned last week about an alarming decline in childhood vaccinations because of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that the likelihood a child born today will have all recommended vaccines by the age of five is less than 20%. Johnson was visiting the medical facility as Britain’s new rules mandating wearing masks when visiting retail businesses came into force. As of Friday, police can issue fines of $127 for non-compliance. 
 
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The director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are meddling in U.S. political campaigns as the November 3 general election draws closer.“We see our adversaries seeking to compromise the private communications of U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets,” William Evanina said Friday in a statement.Evanina said that while the United States “is primarily concerned with China, Russia and Iran,” other countries and “nonstate actors” could also try to “harm our electoral process.”US Cybersecurity Experts See Recent Spike in Chinese Digital Espionage The report said it was ‘one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years” China is trying to influence the “policy environment” in the U.S. with the intent of affecting the presidential race between President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Evanina said.He said “internet trolls and other proxies” are among a variety of disinformation campaigns Russia is using to “undermine confidence in our democratic process.”Iran is also spreading disinformation online and via social media in an attempt to “undermine U.S. democratic institutions and divide the country in advance of the elections,” he added.Evanina said the U.S. intelligence community would continue to watch for “malicious cyber actors” and touted the robust security of state election systems in the U.S. that make it “extraordinarily difficult for foreign adversaries to broadly disrupt or change vote tallies without detection.”He called on the American people to help ensure an orderly election by consuming information with a “critical eye” and by practicing “good cyber hygiene and media literacy.” The NCSC director also urged citizens to report suspicious activity to authorities.VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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