Month: October 2020

U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the first drug to treat COVID-19: remdesivir, an antiviral medicine given to hospitalized patients through an IV.The drug, which California-based Gilead Sciences Inc. is calling Veklury, cut recovery time from 15 days to 10 on average in a large study led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.It has been authorized for use on an emergency basis since spring, and it now becomes the first drug to win full Food and Drug Administration approval for treating COVID-19. President Donald Trump received it when he was diagnosed earlier this month with the disease caused by the coronavirus. Veklury is approved for people at least 12 years old and weighing at least 40 kilograms (88 pounds) who are hospitalized for a coronavirus infection. For patients younger than 12, the FDA will still allow the drug’s use in certain cases under its previous emergency authorization.The drug works by inhibiting a substance the virus uses to make copies of itself. Certain kidney and liver tests are required before starting patients on it to ensure it’s safe for them and to monitor for any possible side effects. And the label warns against using it with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, because that can curb its effectiveness.”We now have enough knowledge and a growing set of tools to help fight COVID-19,” Gilead’s chief medical officer, Dr. Merdad Parsey, said in a statement.FILE – Vials of the drug remdesivir are seen at a hospital in Germany, April 8, 2020.The drug is either approved or has temporary authorization in about 50 countries, he noted.Its price has been controversial, given that no studies have found it improves survival. Last week, a large study led by the World Health Organization found the drug did not help hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but that study did not include a placebo group and was less rigorous than previous ones that found a benefit. The FDA’s approval statement noted that, besides the NIH-led study, two others found the drug beneficial.Gilead charges $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries, and $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that patients pay out of pocket depends on insurance, income and other factors.So far, only steroids such as dexamethasone have been shown to cut the risk of dying of COVID-19. The FDA also has given emergency authorization to using the blood of survivors, and two companies are currently seeking similar authorization for experimental antibody drugs.
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Using blood of recovered COVID-19 patients, the so-called convalescent plasma, as a potential treatment is of little benefit in helping hospitalized patients fight off the infection, according to results of a clinical trial in India.Published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) on Friday, the results show that convalescent plasma, which delivers antibodies from COVID-19 survivors to infected people, failed to reduce death rates or halt progression to severe disease.The findings, from a study of more than 400 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, are a setback for a treatment that U.S. President Donald Trump touted in August as a “historic breakthrough.” The United States and India have authorized convalescent plasma for emergency use.Other countries, including Britain, are collecting donated plasma so that it could be widely rolled out if shown to be effective.”The … trial was able to show a small effect on the rate at which patients were able to rid themselves of the virus, but this was not enough to improve their recovery from the disease,” said Simon Clarke, an expert in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading.”In simple terms, there were no clinical benefits to the patients,” he said.The Indian researchers enrolled 464 adults with confirmed moderate COVID-19 who were admitted to hospitals across India between April and July. They were randomly split into two groups, with one group receiving two transfusions of convalescent plasma, 24 hours apart, alongside best standard care, and the control group receiving best standard care only.After seven days, use of convalescent plasma seemed to improve some symptoms, such as shortness of breath and fatigue, the researchers said, and led to higher rates of something known as “negative conversion,” a sign that the virus is being neutralized by antibodies.But this did not translate into a reduction in deaths or progression to severe disease by 28 days.”The poor performance of convalescent plasma in this trial is disappointing but not entirely surprising,” said Ian Jones, a professor of virology, also at the University of Reading.He said the plasma is more likely to work if given very swiftly after someone contracts COVID-19.He urged these and other researchers to continue to conduct trials of convalescent plasma as a potential COVID-19 treatment, but to do so in newly diagnosed patients.”We still do not have enough treatments for the early stage of disease to prevent severe disease and until this becomes an option, avoiding being infected with the virus remains the key message,” he said.
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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed Thursday that the military alliance would establish a space center at the Allied Air Command base in Ramstein, Germany.Speaking in Brussels after a virtual conference of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg confirmed reports regarding the space center made earlier this week by European news agencies.”NATO is determined to keep our cutting edge in all domains,” he said, including “land, sea, air, cyber and space.”During a meeting last December, Stoltenberg declared “space as an operational domain for NATO. And today we took another important step.”In his comments, the NATO chief said the Allied Air Command space center would help to coordinate allied space activities and provide support for NATO missions and operations from space using satellite communications and imagery. Stoltenberg said the center also would help protect NATO-allied space systems by sharing information about potential threats.Stoltenberg has said repeatedly that NATO has no interest in the “militarization” of space. But Thursday, he said threats against NATO allied satellites and space systems were real.“For instance,” he said, “Russia and China are now developing capabilities that can blind, destroy, for instance, satellites, which will have a severe impact on both military and civilian activities on the ground.”Stoltenberg also said NATO foreign ministers expressed concern about Russia’s growing arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and the importance of Russia and the U.S. extending the new START missile treaty.The secretary-general also called for an immediate cease-fire and cessation of all hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The region lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994.The current fighting that started there marks the biggest escalation in the conflict since the war’s end. Stoltenberg called on Turkey to “use its considerable influence in the region to calm tensions.”
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The Czech Republic will get 30 ventilators from the European Union and is seeking more help and equipment abroad to help grapple with the continent’s worst outbreak of the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Thursday.
The country of 10.7 million has seen daily cases soar to nearly 15,000, and the government fears a spike in hospitalizations could overwhelm its health system within two or three weeks unless the trend is broken soon.
Hospitals were treating 4,417 coronavirus patients as of Wednesday, a four-fold increase this month, and have cut most non-urgent care.
The government has sought to boost numbers of beds, equipment and personnel, including at a 500-bed field hospital in Prague, with the aim of being able to take in 15,500 COIVD-19 patients at once.
“Commission President (Ursula) von der Leyen called to tell me a little while ago that the European Commission will … immediately supply us 30 ventilators from EU crisis stocks, and that it will connect us with other EU member states which will offer us their free capacities,” Babis tweeted.
“Thank you for solidarity and very quick reaction. We highly appreciate the help.”
The government agreed a plan to bring a team of 28 U.S. National Guard medical staff to help in Czech hospitals, and was in talks with Germany to possibly provide 100 medical staff.
“The growth (in hospitalizations) is really so strong that there is a threat of our system being overwhelmed, and we probably will not manage without this help,” Health Minister Roman Prymula told a news conference.
“It is not just the capacity of our system, but, unfortunately, the medical staff, they are increasingly either infected or in quarantine.”
He said the government had agreed to buy 2,000 beds, of which 500 are for patients on ventilation, and secure at least 660 ventilators in total.
Apart from the EU supply, the country was talking to NATO to get more through the defense alliance, Prymula said.
It has also ordered 1,500 oxygen machines.
The country’s hospitals have about 1,900 standard ventilators used for COVID-19 and other patients, of which nearly half were available as of Wednesday. A crowd-funded ventilator developed by Czech scientists in the spring was granted emergency certification on Thursday.
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Huawei’s new smartphone has an upgraded camera, its latest advanced chipset and a better battery. What it may not have outside the Chinese tech giant’s home market is very many buyers.
Huawei, which recently became the world’s No. 1 smartphone maker, on Thursday unveiled its Mate 40 line of premium phones, a product release that comes at a crucial moment for the company as it runs out of room to maneuver around U.S. sanctions squeezing its ability to source components and software.
The Mate 40 could be the last one powered by the company’s homegrown Kirin chipsets because of U.S. restrictions in May barring non-American companies from using U.S. technology in manufacturing without a license.
Analysts say the company had been stockpiling chips before the ban but its supply won’t last forever.
“This is a major challenge to Huawei and it’s really losing its market outside of China,” said Mo Jia, an analyst at independent research firm Canalys. The latest U.S. restrictions mean it “100% has closed doors for Huawei to secure its future components.”
Executives said this summer that production of Kirin chips would end in mid-September because they’re made by contractors that need U.S. manufacturing technology. In a press preview this week ahead of the Mate 40’s launch, staff declined to answer questions on Huawei’s ability to source chips. The head of Huawei’s consumer business, Richard Yu, referred only briefly to the issue at the end of  a virtual launch event Thursday.
“For Huawei, nowadays we are in a very difficult time. We are suffering from the U.S.
government’s third round ban. It’s an unfair ban. It makes (the situation) extremely difficult,” Yu said.
Huawei, which is also a major supplier of wireless network gear, is facing pressure in a wider global battle waged between the U.S. and China over trade and technological supremacy. The U.S. government’s efforts to lobby allies in Europe to not give it a role in new high-speed 5G wireless networks over cybersecurity concerns has been paying off, with countries including Sweden and Britain blocking its gear.
Huawei phones are not widely available in the U.S., but they’re sold in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The company climbed to the top of the global smartphone rankings this summer, knocking Samsung off top spot by shipping 55.8 million devices in the second quarter to gain a 20% share of the market, according to research firms Canalys and International Data Corp. But the performance was driven by strong growth in China while smartphone sales in the rest of the world tumbled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Analysts say it will be hard for Huawei to remain No. 1.
“Huawei’s in a tight spot,” said Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight. Along with the U.S. sanctions, it’s also hurt by slumping confidence in the brand that makes retailers less keen to stock its phones. “And sadly, I don’t think you’re going to see the Mate 40 performing particularly well outside of China.”
Huawei has a small but enthusiastic fan base in Europe, its biggest market outside China. But some users are turned off by the idea of sticking with the brand because of a related problem: recent models like the Mate 40, priced at 899 euros ($1,070) and up, can’t run Google’s full Android operating system because of an earlier round of U.S. sanctions.
Instead, they come with a stripped down open source version of Android, which doesn’t have Google’s Play Store and can’t run popular apps like Chrome, YouTube and Search.
Mark Osten, a 29-year-old architect in Preston, England, bought a Huawei P30 last year when the contract on his previous Samsung phone ended.
He says the camera is great but hesitates to recommend the brand to others because of the uncertainty.
“I just can’t imagine life without YouTube or Google,” said Osten.
To make up for losing Google services, Huawei has built its own app store and has been paying developers to create apps for it. Users can request apps that aren’t yet available, but it’s not something that appeals to Chloe Hetelle, a 35-year-old events organizer in Toulouse, France, who bought a Huawei P20 model two years ago after switching from an iPhone.
“I don’t want to request apps, I just want to have YouTube,” said Hetelle. “I’m not really keen on struggling to get something that I would have easily with another phone.”
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he has canceled a deal to buy a Chinese-developed vaccine against the coronavirus, a day after his health minister announced Brazil would purchase millions of doses of CoronaVac.Bolsonaro said Wednesday that the intentions of Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, one of his leading opponents, were distorted, saying he already canceled the deal before Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello signed it.Pazuello said in a statement that there was “no commitment” to buy the vaccine, only a “non-binding memorandum of understanding between the health ministry and the Butantan Institute” to test and produce the vaccine.Bolsonaro, who said he would not let Brazilians be guinea pigs for the Sinovac drug, is promoting the purchase of another vaccine developed by Oxford University in Britain.Brazil is helping to test both of vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials.Meantime, The Wall Street Journal reports, a Brazilian health regulator says the clinical trials of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC will continue although a volunteer died.Both Oxford University and AstraZeneca reportedly found no safety issues which warranted the trial being stopped.
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The number of nations with more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen to seven.Spain and France are the latest nations to reach the unfortunate mark, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States tops the list with more than 8.3 million total cases, followed by India (7.6 million), Brazil (5.3 million), Russia (1.4 million) and Argentina, which has 1,037,325. Spain is in sixth place with 1,005,325 cases, followed by France with 1,000,369.Spain and France are also the first nations in Western Europe to record more than 1 million COVID-19 infections.Scores of researchers around the world are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.1 million people around the globe and sickened more than 41.1 million.Brazil’s health authority Anvisa said Wednesday that a volunteer in a late-stage clinical trial of a vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca had died but gave no further details about the circumstances.The volunteer was one of the 8,000 who either received the actual vaccine or a false drug known as a placebo. Because the testing has not been suspended, sources say the volunteer was likely a part of the control group that received the placebo.The AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in cooperation with Britain’s University of Oxford, is being tested in large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in several nations, including the United States, Britain, South Africa and India. The drug maker temporarily put the trial on hold last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with a form of spinal inflammation after receiving a second dose of the vaccine.The trial has since resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa but remains on hold in the United States.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its definition about “close contact” with a person infected with COVID-19.The agency had previously determined that close contact was spending 15 consecutive minutes within 2 meters of an infected individual. The revised changes announced Wednesday now defines a close contact as someone who spent a total of 15 minutes accumulated over a 24-hour period.The change by the CDC was prompted by a report of a prison officer in the northeastern U.S. state of Vermont who became infected with COVID-19 after more than 20 brief interactions with inmates who later tested positive for the virus. The brief visits added up to about 17 total minutes of exposure.
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Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it is launching its dating service in 32 European countries after the rollout was delayed earlier this year due to regulatory concerns.The social media company had postponed the rollout of Facebook Dating in Europe in February after concerns were raised by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the main regulator in the European Union for a number of the world’s biggest technology firms, including Facebook.The DPC had said it was told about the Feb. 13 launch date on Feb. 3 and was very concerned about being given such short notice.It also said it was not given documentation regarding data protection impact assessments or decision-making processes that had been undertaken by Facebook.Facebook Dating, a dedicated, opt-in space within the Facebook app, was launched in the United States in September last year. It is currently available in 20 other countries.In a blog post on Wednesday, Kate Orseth, Facebook Dating’s product manager, said users can choose to create a dating profile, and can delete it at any time without deleting their Facebook accounts.The first names and ages of users in their dating profiles will be taken from their Facebook profiles and cannot be edited in the dating service, Orseth said, adding that users’ last names will not be displayed and that they can choose whether to share other personal information on their profiles.
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Having a cold might protect sufferers from a severe case of COVID-19, new research shows.COVID-19 patients who had recently been infected with a common cold virus were less likely to die or require intensive care compared with those who did not have a recent cold, according to the study published recently in the Medical staff of the intensive care unit of the Casalpalocco COVID-19 Clinic in the outskirts of Rome tend to patients, Oct. 21, 2020. (Associated Press)Sagar and his colleagues compared people who’d had a recent common cold infection with those who had not. They found that both groups contracted COVID-19 at the same rate, but people who had recently beaten a common cold experienced less severe COVID-19 symptoms.“They were much less likely to require admission to the intensive care unit. And they were much less likely to die from the infection,” said Sagar.For many adults and most children, COVID-19 causes only minor coldlike symptoms or no symptoms at all. In these people, the immune system effectively clears away virus particles and destroys infected cells, preventing serious disease.But the “immune system is a double-edged sword,” said Andrea Cox, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Exaggerated or poorly regulated immune responses can cause inflammation that leads to breathing troubles, organ failure and death. These severe outcomes usually occur in the elderly or people with other conditions, such as obesity and diabetes.Such vastly different responses to the COVID-19 virus could be explained, in part, by the immune system’s past experiences, experts say. Recognition of SARS-CoV-2 by preexisting T cells could enable a faster and stronger immune response and milder COVID-19 symptoms.Common colds could worsen COVID-19It is also possible that T cells produced from past common colds could impair the immune system’s response to COVID-19.“We have this preexisting standing force of fighters against [disease-causing viruses], and when we encounter those [viruses], there’s expansion of that force that preexists,” said Cox. “The concern is that you might expand [a force] designed to fight something else, not designed perfectly to fight SARS-CoV-2, and that could sort of skew you down this pathway that isn’t the right path to go down.”Prior immune experiences can be harmful in some diseases such as dengue fever. Antibodies and T cells produced in response to one version of the dengue virus can worsen the disease if they encounter a different version of the virus.Currently, there is little evidence that T cells produced in response to common cold coronaviruses worsen COVID-19 disease, but researchers say it is too early to say that they provide protection either.Immunity may also depend on the individual.“Not everyone who gets infected with the virus makes exactly the same immune response. In fact, even identical twins do not make the same exact immune responses to a virus when they get exposed,” said Cox. “So, it may depend on who is being infected. And it may depend on where you are in the world, where different seasonal cold coronaviruses come in different times, and also where you have different genetic backgrounds of people being exposed.”
 
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The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that Purdue Pharma, maker of the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin, pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges and agreed to pay more than $8 billion in fines.
 
OxyContin is a prescription drug that many experts said helped spark a nationwide opioid epidemic in the U.S. that is responsible for more than 470,000 overdose deaths since 2000.
 
As part of the settlement, Purdue Pharma admitted that it misled the federal government by falsely stating it maintained a program to avoid the transfer of controlled substances from individuals for whom they were prescribed to other people for illicit use.
 
Purdue Pharma also admitted it violated federal laws by paying physicians to write more prescriptions for its opioids and to use electronic health records software to influence the prescription of pain medication.
 
The company also admitted to violating federal law by “knowingly and intentionally” conspiring to “aid and abet” the dispensing of medication from doctors “without a legitimate medical purpose.”
 
The plea agreement does not protect the company’s executives or members of the Sackler family, which owns the company, from criminal liability.
 
When announcing the settlement in Washington, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said, “Just as the department prosecutes illicit drug traffickers, the department is committed to doing the same with respect to abuse and diversion of prescription opioids.”
 
Rosen added, “Today’s announcement focuses on the problems from wrongful activities in the prescription opioids realm, so let me note that our efforts there appear to be making a difference.”
 
Before the agreement was reached, there was opposition from state attorneys general, Democratic lawmakers and advocates who asked Attorney General William Barr in a letter not to negotiate with the company and the Sackler family because the proposed deal did not hold them fully accountable.
 
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement that the Justice Department “failed” by not “exposing the truth and holding perpetrators accountable, not rushing a settlement to beat an election.” The announcement comes less than two weeks before President Donald Trump stands for re-election on Nov. 3.
 
In their letter to Barr, 38 Democratic legislators said, “If the only practical consequence of your Department’s investigation is that a handful of billionaires are made slightly less rich, we fear that the American people will lose faith in the ability of the Department to provide accountability and equal justice under the law.”
 
The settlement requires Purdue to make a direct payment of $225 million to the federal government, which is part of a $2 billion forfeiture. The company also faces a more than $3.5 billion criminal fine, which it may not have to fully pay because it will likely be taken through a bankruptcy.
 
In addition to paying $2.8 billion in damages to resolve its civil liability, the U.S. company will be required to transform into a public benefit company that would be managed by a trust without the involvement of the Sackler family.
 
The settlement, which mirrors a part of the company’s proposal to settle about 3,000 lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American governments, also requires some of the settlement money to be spent on medically assisted treatments and other programs to combat the opioid epidemic. 
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A Senegalese anti-cancer group is encouraging women to get mammograms after a drop in the number of women getting screened because of coronavirus concerns, as Estelle Ndjandjo reports from Dakar.Camera: Estelle NdjandjoProduced by: Barry Unger
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A spacecraft from the U.S. space agency NASA briefly touched an asteroid Tuesday on a mission to collect dust and pebbles to bring back to Earth.The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer — carried out the operation on the asteroid Bennu located about 321 million kilometers from Earth.NASA said telemetry data from the spacecraft indicated the mission went as expected, but that scientists will need a week to confirm how much material the spacecraft was able to collect.NASA Plans to Land First Woman on the Moon in 2024Lunar landing will be America’s first since 1972If the amount is not enough, the spacecraft will carry out a second attempt at another location on Bennu in January.Scientists are interested in Bennu because they believe it contains material from the early solar system and may contain the molecular precursors to life and Earth’s oceans.  “A piece of primordial rock that has witnessed our solar system’s entire history may now be ready to come home for generations of scientific discovery, and we can’t wait to see what comes next,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.The asteroid is about as tall as the Empire State Building and could potentially threaten Earth late in the next century, with a 1‐in‐2,700 chance of affecting our planet during one of its close approaches.  The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will orbit the asteroid until next year, when it will begin its journey home to Earth. It is expected to land with the sample in 2023.
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Hispanics, Blacks and Asian Americans in the U.S. have been dying at disproportionately higher rates from the coronavirus compared to white Americans, government health experts reported Tuesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report that from late January — when the pandemic first hit U.S. shores from China and Europe — through early October, deaths of white people were about 12% higher than in the same months of the four previous years. But the CDC said deaths of Hispanics in that 2020 timeframe were 53.6% higher than in recent years, with deaths of Blacks up 32.9% and Asian Americans by 36.6%. “These disproportionate increases among certain racial and ethnic groups are consistent with noted disparities in COVID-19 mortality,” the CDC said. The federal health agency said the largest percentage increase in deaths was seen among individuals ages 25 to 44. In absolute numbers, people under age 25 fared best with 841 excess deaths. The total number of excess deaths compared to recent years ranged from 841 fatalities in people younger than 25 to 94,646 among those ages 75 to 84. The U.S. has now recorded more than 220,000 coronavirus deaths and 8.2 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both figures are the highest of any country across the globe. 
 
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Microsoft Corp said Tuesday it had disabled more than 90% of the machines used by a gang of Russian-speaking cyber criminals to control a massive network of computers with a potential to disrupt the U.S. election. Aided by a series of U.S. court orders and relationships with technology providers in other countries, Microsoft said its weeklong campaign against the gang running the Trickbot network was heading off a possible source of disruption to the November 3 U.S. vote. “We’ve taken down most of their infrastructure,” corporate Vice President Tom Burt said in an interview. “Their ability to go and infect targets has been significantly reduced.” The criminals in charge of Trickbot have infected more than 1 million personal computers, including many inside local governments, according to cybersecurity professionals. They then make deals with other gangs to install ransomware and other malicious programs on the infected machines, security professionals say. Although there is no evidence that the gang has worked with foreign governments, Burt said he wanted to disrupt Trickbot before the election in case Russian agencies attempted to use it to interfere with voting or cast doubt on the results by manipulating data. Some security experts who had seen little impact from Microsoft’s initial efforts to combat Trickbot said this week that new control servers being brought online by the gang were getting cut off, making it harder for the group to install new programs on infected computers. “Disruption operations against Trickbot are currently global in nature and have had success against Trickbot infrastructure,” said Intel 471 Chief Executive Mark Arena. “Regardless, there still is a small number of working controllers based in Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan that still are able to respond.” The Trickbot gang is now asking other malware groups to install its software, Arena and others said, and it is expected to rebuild its infrastructure in other ways. Burt said such efforts to adapt would at least distract the gang from bringing chaos to voting or other local government activity if it had been so inclined. 
 
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U.S. first lady Melania Trump will not join President Donald Trump on the campaign trail Tuesday because of a lingering cough from COVID-19, according to her chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham. Grisham said Tuesday that Mrs. Trump’s health continues to improve daily after she and the president announced in early October that they had contracted the infectious disease. The first lady has decided not to accompany Trump to a campaign rally Tuesday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, “out of an abundance of caution,” Grisham said. Melania Trump, who announced last week that she had recovered from COVID-19, made her last public appearance during the September 29 debate between Trump and Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden.  
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