Day: November 10, 2020

As severe weather events increase in frequency and intensity across the U.S. and around the world, scientists and forecasters are seeking more effective weather-mapping programs. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
Camera: Adam Greenbaum   Produced by: JulieTaboh/Adam Greenbaum
 
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A study conducted by Britain’s Oxford University suggests COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of developing a psychiatric disorder within three months of catching the virus.
The study, published Monday in the Lancet Psychiatry Journal, indicates one in five surviving COVID-19 patients was found to be diagnosed with a mental disorder within 90 days of a positive coronavirus test. The researchers say that is about twice the normal rate.
The most common disorders diagnosed were anxiety, depression and insomnia, while patients were also found to have significantly higher risks for dementia.
One of the researchers on the study, Oxford professor of psychiatry Paul Harrison, said the study confirms common fears about the virus. “People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings …show this to be likely.”
Harrison suggested health services need to be prepared to deal with new mental health cases and doctors and researchers around the world urgently need to investigate the causes and identify new treatments for mental illness.
The researchers also found that people with a pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis were 65 percent more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without, even when the known risk factors for the virus were considered.
For their study, researchers reportedly examined electronic health records of 69 million people in the United States including over 62,000 cases of COVID-19.
 
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European Union regulators have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using data to gain an unfair advantage over merchants using its platform.
The EU’s executive commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said Tuesday that the charges have been sent to the company.
The commission said it takes issue with Amazon’s systematic use of non-public business data to avoid “the normal risks of competition and to leverage its dominance” for e-commerce services in France and Germany, the company’s two biggest markets in the EU.
The EU started looking into Amazon in 2018 and has been focusing on its dual role as a marketplace and retailer.
In addition to selling its own products, the U.S. company allows third-party retailers to sell their own goods through its site. Last year, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide were from these outside merchants.
Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said it’s not a problem that Amazon is a successful business but “our concern is very specific business conduct which appears to distort genuine competition.”
Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars. The company rejected the accusations.
“We disagree with the preliminary assertions of the European Commission and will continue to make every effort to ensure it has an accurate understanding of the facts,” the company said in a statement.
The company can, under EU rules, reply to the charges in writing and present its case in an oral hearing.
Vestager also opened a second investigation into Amazon over whether it favors its own products and those from third-party merchants that use its logistics and delivery services.
It’s the EU’s latest effort to curb the power of big technology companies, following a series of multi-billion-dollar antitrust fines against Google in previous years.
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A top Pakistani government scientist says Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is not suited for Pakistan, or other developing countries because of the -80°C temperatures it needs to be kept at, and the need for a second shot.The American pharmaceutical company announced Monday that late-stage testing on its potential two-dose vaccine indicates it is more than 90% effective in preventing the virus in participants without evidence of prior infection.The revelation is being hailed as a rare piece of positive news in the fight against the pandemic that has globally infected more than 50 million people, with 1.2 million deaths and 33 million people recovered.But Professor Atta Ur Rahman, who heads Pakistan’s Task Force on Science and Technology, said Tuesday it is “premature at least” for his country or others in the developing world to celebrate the Pfizer vaccine.“This is a messenger RNA vaccine and it has to be transported at -80°C, so this vaccine is not suited for developing countries,” Rahman told VOA. “The cold storage infrastructure and chains to take this from the airport across the cities and across the countries are missing in the developing world,” the professor explained.He went on to note that COVID-19 patients would require two doses of the Pfizer vaccine three weeks apart and “a low-temperature carriage” requirement makes it all the more difficult in Pakistan, where average summer temperatures in southern and southwestern regions soar to between 40°C and 50°C.COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.FILE – Students wear protective face masks, maintaining a safe distance as they attend a class amid COVID-19 pandemic in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sept. 30, 2020.Own clinical trials on Chinese vaccinesRahman said Pakistan is also conducting its own final-phase clinical trials on two Chinese-made single-dose vaccines in partnership with China. He says that the vaccines can be transported in normal temperatures, unlike the Pfizer vaccine.“Our trials are going on very well. The results are very positive as far as I am aware… Both these vaccines do not have this -80°C transportation problem. I expect the vaccines to be better suited for Pakistan than the Pfizer vaccine.” One of the vaccines under trial in Pakistan has been developed by Chinese biotech firm CanSinoBio and is already undergoing Phase 3, or large-scale, testing on humans in several countries, including China, Russia, Chile and Argentina.Rahman said the clinical trials in Pakistan, which began in September, will take at least three months and that the results will then be sent back to China to be evaluated.Pakistan has documented nearly 347,000 infections, with 7,000 deaths and almost 320,000 people recovered since the pandemic hit the country of about 220 million in February.The number of cases in Pakistan has steadily declined to a few hundred a day since mid-June, when the daily rate of infection spiked at more than 6,000.But officials in recent days have warned the South Asian nation is experiencing a second wave of infections, reporting 1,637 new cases and 23 deaths Tuesday. The resurgence has prompted the government to revive some restrictions on public movement to stem the spread of the ailment. 
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The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a Republican effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act health care law.The hearing comes weeks after Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.At the center of the case is a requirement in the 2010 law for most people to have a minimum level of health insurance or face a financial penalty.  In a 2012 case, the Supreme Court ruled that provision was allowed on the basis that it represented a tax that Congress is allowed to levy.  In 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress and set the penalty to zero.A group of states, led by Texas, is leading the current charge to dismantle the health care law, commonly known as Obamacare.  They argue that the mandate for individuals to purchase health coverage is unconstitutional, and that without that provision, the entire Affordable Care Act must be struck down.Part of the original congressional intent in requiring people to have coverage was that it would bring more healthy people into the system who would pay premiums without using many services, helping to offset costs of individuals who needed more care, including those with pre-existing conditions who had previously been denied coverage.Texas and its partners argue that eliminating the individual mandate would create an imbalance and push health costs unfairly higher.The opposition is led by California, and points to the 2017 action by Congress as evidence that lawmakers had no problem with removing only the penalty for the individual mandate while allowing the rest of the Affordable Care Act to remain in place. They further argue that as the law stands, with no penalty in place, it merely encourages people to have health insurance, and thus cannot be seen as an unconstitutional imposition by the government.The court is expected to issue its ruling in the case by late June or early July.Of the justices who were members of the court during the 2012 case, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to strike down the entire law.  Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor voted to uphold it.Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have since joined the court.If the court strikes down the law, up to 20 million people could lose their health coverage and insurance companies could be allowed to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
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Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa suspended clinical trials of a Chinese firm’s coronavirus vaccine after an unspecified “adverse incident” involving a volunteer recipient late last month. Anvisa would only say such incidents could involve a death or serious disability resulting in hospitalization.  Anvisa’s action with the CoronaVac vaccine occurred the same day a rival, U.S. pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, announced its vaccine has shown 90 percent effectiveness. Word of Pfizer’s vaccine success sent global financial markets soaring. Both the Pfizer and the Chinese Sinovac vaccine are in Phase III trials, the last stage of testing before regulators give it clearance for public use. Brazil has the highest coronavirus tally in Latin America, with more than 5,664,000 confirmed cases and 162,397 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center. 
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U.S. health officials have allowed emergency use of the first antibody drug to help the immune system fight COVID-19, an experimental approach against the virus that has killed more than 238,000 Americans.  The Food and Drug Administration on Monday cleared the experimental drug from Eli Lilly for people 12 and older with mild or moderate COVID-19 not requiring hospitalization. It’s a one-time treatment given through an IV.  The therapy is still undergoing additional testing to establish its safety and effectiveness. It is similar to a treatment President Donald Trump received after contracting the virus last month. Lilly’s studies of the antibody drug are continuing. Early results suggest it may help clear the coronavirus sooner and possibly cut hospitalizations in people with mild to moderate COVID-19. A study of it in hospitalized patients was stopped when independent monitors saw the drug did not seem to be helping in that situation. The government previously reached an agreement to buy and supply much of the early production of Lilly’s drug. FILE – Lab technicians load vials of investigational coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment drug remdesivir at a Gilead Sciences facility in La Verne, California, March 18, 2020. (Gilead Sciences Inc/Handout)Only one drug, Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, has full FDA approval for treating COVID-19. Government treatment guidelines also back using dexamethasone and other steroids for certain severely ill, hospitalized patients. One other treatment has an emergency use designation now: convalescent plasma, made from the blood of COVID-19 survivors. No large studies have shown it to be more effective than usual care alone, however.  The new drug is part of an emerging family of biologic therapies that offer a promising new approach to preventing serious disease and death from COVID-19. Experts say the infused drugs could serve as a therapeutic bridge to help manage the virus until vaccines are widely available. The drugs are laboratory-made versions of antibodies, blood proteins the body creates to help target and eliminate foreign infections. The new therapies are concentrated versions of the antibodies that proved most effective against the virus in patient studies. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. also has asked for emergency authorization for an antibody drug it is testing, the one Trump received. FILE – Medical technicians work at a drive-thru coronavirus testing facility at the Regeneron Pharmaceuticals company’s Westchester campus in Tarrytown, New York, September 17, 2020.FDA regulators authorized the Lilly drug using their emergency powers to quickly speed the availability of experimental drugs and other medical products during public health crises. Potential benefits must outweigh risksIn normal times the FDA requires “substantial evidence” to show that a drug is safe and effective, usually through one or more large, rigorously controlled patient studies. But during public health emergencies the agency can lower those standards and require only that an experimental treatment’s potential benefits outweigh its risks. The emergency authorization functions like a temporary approval for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. To win full approval, Lilly will have to submit additional research to fully define the drug’s safety and benefit for patients.  The government has signed an agreement with Lilly to spend $375 million to buy 300,000 vials of the drug. How many doses that would provide is unclear. Each vial contains 70 milligrams and that dose proved ineffective in the early results. It took four times that amount — 2,800 milligrams — to show any effect. The Lilly drug is authorized for people 12 and older who weigh at least 40 kilograms (about 88 pounds), and who are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. This includes those who are 65 years of age or older, or who have certain chronic medical conditions. 
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