Month: July 2020

An unmanned spacecraft blasted off Thursday on a yearlong journey to Mars, beginning one of China’s most ambitious space missions to date.The Tianwen-1 lifted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch site on China’s southern Hainan Island aboard a Long March 5 rocket as hundreds of cheering fans gathered on beaches across the bay to witness the event.The Tianwen-1, which translates into “Heavenly Questions” or “Questions to Heaven,” is expected to reach the Red Planet by February.  Once it enters orbit, a landing probe will detach and land on the planet’s Utopia Planitia region, where it will release a small solar-powered rover that will explore the surface for at least three months.A successful landing would make China only the second nation to place a spacecraft on the Martian surface, with the United States having landed eight probes since 1976.  China would also be the first to achieve all three phases — orbiting, landing and deploying a rover — in the same mission.This is China’s first independent mission to Mars. A 2011 attempt failed when a Russian rocket carrying a Chinese orbiter malfunctioned after launch, and was unable to escape Earth orbit.The Tianwen-1 mission is the most ambitious undertaking of China’s rapidly evolving space program.  Only the U.S. and Russia have successfully launched their own astronauts into orbit and successfully achieved a “soft” landing of a spacecraft on the lunar surface.Last year, though, China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft became the first to make a soft landing on the far side of the moon.The Tianwen-1 is the third mission to Mars this year.  A Japanese rocket blasted off Monday carrying an orbiter developed and built by the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. space agency NASA is scheduled to launch a new Martian rover, dubbed Perseverance, July 30. 
…

President Donald Trump has announced the U.S. government will provide an additional $5 billion in aid, equipment and training to the nation’s nursing homes, many of which are hot spots in the coronavirus pandemic.He said COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, poses “the greatest threat to our senior citizens,” and that “nearly half of the deaths have occurred among those living in nursing homes or long-term care facilities.”According to federal estimates, nursing home residents accounted for roughly 37,000 COVID-19-related deaths; overall, the U.S. has recorded nearly 143,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics.“I want to send a message of support and hope to every senior citizen who has been dealing with the struggle of isolation in what should be the golden years of your life,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House during the coronavirus news briefing.“We will get to the other end of that tunnel very quickly, we hope. The light is starting to shine. We will get there very quickly.”Nursing homes received nearly $5 billion in pandemic relief funds approved by Congress earlier this year. The new package of $5 billion in aid would go toward increased testing of nursing home staff, distribution of a list of those facilities with increased numbers of COVID-19 cases, and additional training and support. Nursing homes in hot spots would get priority.Biden economic planTrump’s announcement comes a day after former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, released the third plank of his overall economic plan, which focused on child care and home health care, with a pledge to provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.Also Wednesday, while discussing reopening schools in the fall, Trump was asked by reporters if he was comfortable sending his own son and grandchildren to in-person schools.”Well, I am comfortable with that,” Trump said. “I would like to see the schools open 100 percent. And we’ll do it safely. We’ll do it carefully.” He said, ultimately, the decision would be up to state governors.Late Wednesday, Senate Republicans and the White House said they had reached a tentative agreement on the next coronavirus relief package, which would provide about $1 trillion in aid. Legislation is expected Thursday.Earlier in the day, the U.S. government announced it will pay $1.95 billion to American drug maker Pfizer and German biotech company BioNTech SE for 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, if it proves to be safe and effective.The companies said Wednesday they had finalized a deal with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department to supply the agencies with a vaccine they are developing jointly, the latest in a number of comparable agreements with other vaccine companies.Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News Wednesday the U.S. could buy 500 million additional doses of the vaccine provided they are “safe and effective.”Operation Warp SpeedThe deal announced Wednesday is part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, which is aimed at delivering 300 million doses of an approved vaccine by January.Pfizer and BioNTech said they hope to be ready to pursue some form of regulatory approval as early as October if current studies of the vaccine are successful, and that they currently expect to deliver up to 100 million doses by the end of the year.The deal was announced one day after more than 1,000 people in the U.S. died of COVID-19, the first time since early June the U.S. reached the single-day milestone, and Trump acknowledged the coronavirus crisis in the country “will … get worse before it gets better.”The U.S. continues to lead the world in COVID-19 fatalities with more than 142,300, far greater than the 81,487 deaths in second-ranked Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. The U.S. also remains the world leader in infections, with 3.5 million of the world’s 15 million coronavirus cases.Data released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, however, the actual number of coronavirus infections in some parts of the U.S. is anywhere between two and 13 times what has been officially reported.The CDC based its conclusions on blood samples collected from people who were given routine clinical tests across 10 geographic regions, including New York City, south Florida, Missouri and the western states of Utah and Washington. In Missouri, for example, the estimated number of actual infections was 13 times the number of confirmed cases, while in Utah, the actual number was at least twice as high.The authors of the study, which was also published on the website of JAMA Internal Medicine, said many infected people did not seek medical care or get tested because they likely had mild symptoms or none at all, and likely spread the virus among the population. At least 40 percent of people who are infected do not develop symptoms.The CDC researchers also found that only a small number of people in many parts of the United States were carrying the coronavirus antibodies as of late May, indicating that most of the population remains at risk of infection.U.S. labs are also struggling to keep up with the increased testing, with some labs taking weeks to return COVID-19 results, experts say.“There’s been this obsession with, ‘How many tests are we doing per day?’” Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director, said in an AP report. “The question is how many tests are being done with results coming back within a day, where the individual tested is promptly isolated and their contacts are promptly warned.”
…

Laboratories across the U.S. are buckling under a surge of coronavirus tests, creating long processing delays that experts say are actually undercutting the pandemic response.With the U.S. tally of infections at 3.9 million Wednesday and new cases surging, the bottlenecks are creating problems for workers kept off the job while awaiting results, nursing homes struggling to keep the virus out and for the labs themselves, dealing with a crushing workload.Some labs are taking weeks to return COVID-19 results, exacerbating fears that asymptomatic people could be spreading the virus if they don’t isolate while they wait.“There’s been this obsession with, ‘How many tests are we doing per day?’” said Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The question is how many tests are being done with results coming back within a day, where the individual tested is promptly isolated and their contacts are promptly warned.”Frieden and other public health experts have called on states to publicly report testing turnaround times, calling it an essential metric to measure progress against the virus.The testing lags in the U.S. come as the number of people confirmed to be infected globally passed a staggering 15 million on Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world in cases as well as deaths, which stand at more than 142,000 nationwide. New York, once by far the U.S. leader in infections, has been surpassed by California, though that is partly due to robust testing in a state with more than twice the population of New York.Guidelines issued by the CDC recommend that states lifting virus restrictions have testing turnaround time under four days. The agency recently issued new recommendations against retesting most COVID-19 patients to confirm they’ve recovered.“It’s clogging up the system,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant health secretary, told reporters last week.Zachrey Warner knows it all too well.The 30-year-old waiter from Columbus, Ohio, was sent home from work on July 5 with a high fever a few days after he began feeling ill. He went for a test five days later at the request of his employer.Almost two weeks and one missed pay period later, he finally got his answer on Wednesday: negative.Though Warner said most symptoms — including fever, diarrhea, chest tightness and body aches — stopped a few days after he was tested, he wasn’t allowed to return to work without the result. On Wednesday he got a call telling him he didn’t have COVID-19.It was “frustrating that I’ve missed so much work due to testing taking forever,” Warner said. “It is what it is … (but) I’m glad I’m negative and happy to be able to get back to work this week.”Beyond the economic hurt the testing lags can cause, they pose major health risks too.In Florida, as the state confirmed 9,785 new cases on Wednesday and the death toll rose to nearly 5,500, nursing homes have been under an order to test all employees every two weeks. But long delays for results have some questioning the point.Jay Solomon, CEO of Aviva in Sarasota, a senior community with a nursing home and assisted living facility, said results were taking up to 10 days to come back.“It’s almost like, what are we accomplishing in that time?” Solomon said. “If that person is not quarantined in that 7-10 days, are they spreading without realizing it?”Test results that come back after two or three days are nearly worthless, many health experts say, because by then the window for tracing the persons’ contacts to prevent additional infections has essentially closed.Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University said it’s reasonable to tell people awaiting test results to isolate for 24 hours, but the delays have been unacceptable.“Imagine, you tell a parent with young children to self-isolate for 10 days or more without knowing they actually have COVID? I mean, that’s ridiculous. That’s actually absurd,” Wen said.U.S. officials have recently called for ramping up screening to include seemingly healthy Americans who may be unknowingly spreading the disease in their communities. But Quest Diagnostics, one of the nation’s largest testing chains, said it can’t keep up with demand and most patients will face waits of a week or longer for results.Quest has urged health care providers to cut down on tests from low-priority individuals, such as those without symptoms or any contact with someone who has tested positive.As testing has expanded, so have mask orders and other measures aimed at keeping infections down. Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and Oregon became the latest to announce statewide mandatory mask orders on Wednesday.The U.S. is testing over 700,000 people per day, up from less than 100,000 in March. Trump administration officials point out that roughly half of U.S. tests are performed on rapid systems that give results in about 15 minutes or in hospitals, which typically process tests in about 24 hours. But last month, that still left some 9 million tests going through laboratories, which have been plagued by limited chemicals, machines and kits to develop COVID-19 tests.There is no scientific consensus on the rate of testing needed to control the virus in the U.S., but experts have recommended for months that the U.S. test at least 1 million to 3 million people daily.Health experts assembled by the Rockefeller Foundation said last week that the U.S. should scale up to testing 30 million Americans per week by the fall, when school reopenings and flu season are expected to further exacerbate the virus’ spread. The group acknowledged that will not be possible with the current laboratory-based testing system.The National Institutes of Health has set up a “shark tank” competition to quickly identify promising rapid tests and has received more than 600 applications. The goal is to have new testing options in mass production by the fall.Until then, the backbone of U.S. testing remains at several hundred labs with high-capacity machines capable of processing thousands of samples per day. Many say they could be processing far more tests if not for global shortages of testing chemicals, pipettes and other materials.Dr. Bobbi Pritt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says the hospital’s machines are running at just 20% of capacity. Lab technicians run seven different COVID-19 testing formats, switching back and forth depending on the availability of supplies.At Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, lab workers lobby testing manufacturers on a weekly basis to provide more kits, chemicals and other materials.“There’s no planning ahead, we just do as many as we can and cross our fingers that we’ll get more,” said Dr. Colleen Kraft, who heads the hospital’s testing lab.
 
…

A report by the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre this month accused hackers with links to Russian intelligence of attacking organizations developing a vaccine for COVID-19.  The report has raised diplomatic tensions and opened a window into the world of pharmaceutical intelligence. VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko has the story.
…

The European Southern Observatory on Wednesday released the first image ever captured by a telescope of multiple planets orbiting around a sunlike star.In a statement, the ESO said the image was taken by its Extremely Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.This image from the European Southern Observatory, July 2020, shows the star TYC 8998-760-1, upper left, and two exoplanets. The image was captured by blocking the light from the star, allowing for the fainter planets to be detected.The researchers who discovered the solar system said it was 300 light-years away, relatively close by galactic standards. They said the star was officially known as TYC 8998-760-1 and located in the Musca constellation (the Fly). They have determined it is barely 17 million years old, compared with our sun, which is believed to be 4.5 billion years old.Research behind the discovery was published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Lead researcher Alexander Bohn, a doctoral candidate at Leiden University, said what makes the discovery so exciting is that the star is “a very young version of our sun. He said it provides “a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our solar system but at a much earlier stage of its evolution.”Bohn said the observations can help scientists better understand the evolution of our own solar system. Taking direct images, he said, provides the best chance to detect life outside our solar system, if it exists.He said that in observing light from the planets themselves, “the atmospheres can be analyzed for molecules and elements that might suggest life.”Astronomers typically confirm worlds around other stars by observing brief but periodic dimming of the starlight, indicating an orbiting planet. Such indirect observations have identified thousands of planets in our Milky Way galaxy.The ESO is considered the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by a consortium of European nations and Chile, as well as other member nations.
…

The U.S. government will pay $1.95 billion to American drug maker Pfizer and German biotech company BioNTech SE for 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, if it proves to be safe and effective. The companies said Wednesday they finalized a deal with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department to supply the agencies with a vaccine they are developing jointly, the latest in a number of comparable agreements with other vaccine companies. FILE – Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing in Washington, July 8, 2020.HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News on Wednesday the U.S. could buy 500 million additional doses of the vaccine provided they are “safe and effective.” The deal announced Wednesday is part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, which hopes to deliver 300 million doses of an approved vaccine by January 2021. Pfizer and BioNTech said they hope to be ready to pursue some form of regulatory approval as early as October if ongoing studies of the vaccine are successful and that it currently expects to deliver up to 100 million doses by the end of the year. The deal was announced one day after more than 1,000 people in the U.S. died of COVID-19, the first time since early June the U.S. reached the grim single-day milestone, and Trump acknowledged the coronavirus crisis in the country  “will … get worse before it gets better.” The U.S. continues to lead the world in COVID-19 fatalities with more than 142,300, far greater than the 81,487 deaths in second-ranked Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. The U.S. also remains the world leader in infections, with 3.5 million of the world’s 15 million coronavirus cases. Data released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say, however, the actual number of coronavirus infections in some parts of the U.S. is anywhere between two to 13 times higher than what has been officially reported. The CDC based its conclusions on blood samples collected from people who were given routine clinical tests across 10 geographic regions, including New York City, south Florida, Missouri and the western states of Utah and Washington. In Missouri, for example, the estimated number of actual infections was 13 times higher than the number of confirmed cases, while in Utah, the actual number was at least twice as high.   FILE – A Salt Lake County Health Department public health nurse performs a coronavirus test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department in Salt Lake City, Utah, July 10, 2020.The authors of the study, which was also published on the website of JAMA Internal Medicine, said many infected people did not seek medical care or get tested because they likely had mild symptoms or none at all, and likely spread the virus among the population. At least 40% of people who are infected do not develop symptoms.   The CDC researchers also found that only a small number of people in many parts of the United States were carrying the coronavirus antibodies as of late May, indicating that most of the population remains highly at risk of infection.Across the globe Meanwhile, South Africa is now a global COVID-19 hotspot with more than half of the confirmed cases on the African continent. South Africa’s health ministry said there were nearly 382,000 cases and nearly 5,400 deaths in the country. Nepal’s government announced an end to lockdown measures 120 days after they were first imposed in March. The information ministry said despite the decline in the number of infections in Nepal, schools and colleges would remain closed until further notice. FILE – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, who is infected with COVID-19, wears a protective face mask as he waves to supporters outside his official residence the Alvorada Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, July 20, 2020.The Brazilian government said Wednesday that President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for the coronavirus for the third time. The government said he tested positive again Tuesday after a follow-up test on July 15 and after announcing he first had COVID-19 on July 7. Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus as a “little flu” and frequently mingled in crowds, sometimes without wearing a mask. The World Health Organization said the median period from the beginning to recovery for mild cases is about two weeks.  Wayne Lee, Richard Green and Mia Bush contributed to this report.
 
…

COVID-19 tests that take an hour or less and can be done at doctors’ offices, workplaces, or even at home are under development. They could have a big impact on the course of the pandemic in the United States, where long lines for tests and long waits for results are undermining efforts to control the disease.  People who get tested for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have been waiting for days, up to a week in some places, to find out if they are infected, as overloaded labs struggle to keep up with demand. Patients can spread the virus while they are waiting for test results. That’s also a setback for public health workers who need to identify patients’ contacts and isolate them before the virus spreads further. Plus, patients tested one day can be infected the next, while they are waiting for results.  “If you get the results back a week later, those results are effectively a historical record. They’re not actionable information,” said Zev Williams at Columbia University.  Testing has taken on extra urgency in the COVID-19 pandemic because roughly half of infections may be spread from people with no symptoms, according to some estimates. Frequent, widespread and fast Current assays require certified laboratories with expensive, specialized equipment and trained personnel. Labs have run into shortages of chemicals, the special cartridges some machines use, and even the long swabs that health workers insert deep into patients’ noses to get samples.  “Testing has to be frequent, widespread and fast,” Williams said. It should be fast enough so people can take a test and get results before they get on an airplane, enter a nursing home, or go to school, he said. Some companies are aiming to develop simple tests patients could do at home. That would eliminate many of the supply issues, as well as keep patients safe and prevent them from exposing anyone else. “Bringing testing home can help solve just about every aspect of how we manage this pandemic,” said Sherlock Biosciences CEO Rahul Dhanda, “as long as a test can be accurate and dependable.” Sherlock is developing a test called INSPECTR that looks and functions like a home pregnancy test. The user applies a bit of saliva to a strip of paper in a plastic holder. In about half an hour, the paper changes color if the user is infected. Dhanda says it should cost no more than $30. The company hopes to have the test on the market in the first half of next year. Sherlock is also working on a system that could run in pharmacies, grocery stores, nursing homes or just about anywhere else with a power supply. It runs on a machine developed by medical device company Binx that is currently used in clinics and doctors’ offices to test for sexually transmitted infections. Patients would spit in a tube and get results in half an hour.  Sherlock hopes to have the system up and running in the fall. It’s based on an approach the company is using in a Food and Drug Administration-approved test. That test uses CRISPR, a system best known for gene editing, to identify specific genetic fingerprints of the virus. The scientists behind the technology, including Sherlock’s co-founders, put a low-cost open-source version online at STOPCovid.science. All the reaction components are contained in one tube. Saliva or a mouth swab go in the tube, which then sits at 60 degrees Celsius for half an hour. Dip a paper test strip in the tube, and yes-or-no results show up in a few minutes. It is not FDA approved, and it is not intended for clinical testing, but the researchers say the aim is to help move the technology forward.Repurposed fertility test Columbia’s Williams helped develop a similar assay. In an example of how COVID-19 has scrambled everyone’s priorities, Williams is not an infectious disease doctor. He heads the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the university medical center.  He said one way to test prospective parents who are having trouble conceiving is to look for genetic defects that can cause infertility.  “In terms of the underlying molecular biology, it’s not that different” to look for a fertility gene or the genes of a virus, he said. But overhauling the fertility test to look for the coronavirus in saliva, and doing it in such a way that it could be done easily without special equipment or training was a challenge. “It actually took an enormous amount of work to make it very simple,” he said. Like the STOPCovid test, all the reactions take place in one tube. The only special equipment they need is a heating block or hot water kept at 60 degrees Celsius. But instead of getting results on a strip of paper, this test is based on color. The red test solution turns yellow if the sample contains virus.  All of the test makers say their assays are as accurate as those done at major labs today, but the FDA has not yet evaluated any of them. Only one test, Sherlock and Binx’s, has a commercial partner to scale up manufacturing.  Williams said his group is working to get their test to market “as quick as possible. I’ll tell you, it’s something we push on every single day.” “You just see how the problems are not getting less,” he said. “They’re growing and growing, and the need for this is growing.” 
…