More than two lots twisters reported in four states
Louisiana sheriff reports ‘extreme flooding’ seen hardly ever ‘if ever’
David Maynard sorts through the debris looking for his wallet in Onalaska, Texas, on Thursday after a tornado damaged his house the night prior to.
Photograph: Brett Coomer/AP.
A minimum of six people were killed after extreme storms tore through a variety of southern states late on Wednesday, adding to weeks of severe weather condition that had already killed more than two dozen people and damaged hundreds of homes.
More than 2 dozen tornadoes hit four states over night.
In Louisiana, a guy was discovered dead after he lost his footing and was swept away by floodwaters. A witness reported the male was trying to retrieve a trash can from water near a drain ditch.
Some locations in Louisiana had experienced “severe flooding” the similarity which Sheriff Jayson Richardson of DeSoto parish had not “seen in lots of, many years, if ever”.
” Essentially the water rose actually fast and we needed to save some individuals out of homes. I think we had about 20 approximately houses that people were flooded in,” he informed the Shreveport Times.
The Alexandria school of Louisiana State University verified “there [was] damage to DeWitt Livestock structure and a camper turned over,” leaving the school without power.
” All resident students safe,” the school tweeted.
LSUA ( @LSUAlexandria)
Thanks to #LSUA Facilities, cleanup is underway here on campus. Stay tuned for more images from last night’s storm. pic.twitter.com/n3Vnx76 Cnj
April 23,2020
Wednesday’s storms triggered havoc in lots of rural neighborhoods, causing damage to factories at multiple centers throughout the south. At least two factory workers have actually been killed.
In Louisiana, a worker’s body was discovered more than a quarter-mile away after an evident twister struck, significantly harming the factory and close-by town.
A twister in Marshall county, Oklahoma, killed a worker after a storm struck the Oklahoma Steel and Wire plant as workers were leaving for the day.
Robert Chaney, the county’s emergency situation management director, said the person’s body was found near J&I Manufacturing, a trailer factory about 6 miles south-west of Madill.
The tornado harmed a minimum of two other organisations.
Elsewhere, a minimum of 3 individuals were eliminated when an evident tornado touched down in south-east Texas near Onalaska, about 75 miles (120 km) north of Houston, the Polk county emergency situation management system said.
Royden Ogletree ( @roydenogletree)
Onalaska on Lake Livingston was entirely devastated by a prospective twister this night. This is video of Yaupon Cove from Lindsey Jones. More to come. pic.twitter.com/zg6bMj3Bhb
April 23,2020
According to Carrie Miller, a spokesperson for Polk county judge Sydney Murphy, the storm also caused extreme damage to houses and other structures in Seven Oaks.
” It took me 45 minutes to climb through the roof to go out,” Charles Stephens, an Onalaska homeowner, informed the Houston Chronicle after he and his wife attempted to shelter in their bathroom.
An evergreen fell through the Stephens’ roof during the storms. They used a hatchet to leave the debris.
A National Weather condition Service group will be dispatched across the south to study damage and to validate whether the storms were tornadoes. Poweroutage.us, which tracks energy reports, revealed more than 100,000 customers from Texas to Mississippi without power as of Thursday.
Throughout southern Mississippi and Alabama, trees and power lines were toppled as twister warnings sent out citizens rushing to take cover.
The Navy has tested the entire crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for the coronavirus, the service said Thursday.
So far, 840 sailors have tested positive for the virus, but a “small number” of results are still pending, the Navy said in a news release.
Thursday’s report marked a jump from the 777 cases the Navy reported Wednesday when it said 99 percent of the crew had been tested.
Of the total positive cases, 88 sailors have since recovered, the Navy noted. Four sailors are in the hospital, down from six Wednesday; none are in intensive care.
One sailor from the Roosevelt died last week.
The coronavirus outbreak aboard the Roosevelt became a major scandal after the ship’s former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, wrote a letter imploring the Navy for help with the outbreak.
After the letter leaked to the media, Crozier was fired by then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who later resigned himself after he gave a speech aboard the Roosevelt berating Crozier.
In the letter, Crozier asked for permission to offload all but 10 percent of the ship’s nearly 5,000-person crew.
As of Thursday, 4,234 sailors have moved ashore to Guam, where the Roosevelt is docked while the ship handles the outbreak.
The Navy conducted an investigation into the situation on the Roosevelt, and top officials have not ruled out reinstating Crozier when it wraps. The investigation results’s release is pending approval from Defense Secretary Mark EsperMark EsperForeign powers test US defenses amid coronavirus pandemic Pentagon to extend troop movement freeze to June 30 What analysts are missing about Trump’s Africa policy MORE.
“My understanding is the Navy completed its investigation last week. They’re coming to see me today, tomorrow, I believe, or the next day, and they will back-brief me on their findings, their recommendations,” Esper said Wednesday night on Fox News.
“I’m sure the Navy is going to make the right recommendations, and I will have to assess those, and we’ll move forward from there,” he added.
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Quarantine Regimen is a regular function that asks political, company, sports and entertainment power brokers how their every day lives have altered– and how they’re still doing their jobs– during the coronavirus crisis.
Former Denver Broncos running back and Pro Football Hall of Famer Terrell Davis is finding different ways to normalize life as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has put his profession and life on hold.
Davis played eight seasons with the Broncos where he won 2 Super Bowls and was called Super Bowl MVP in1998 He holds 56 Broncos’ group records, consisting of most points in a season (138), many goals in a season (23) and most total lawns from skirmish (2,225). He was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Popularity in 2017.
Davis has actually worked as an analyst for the NFL Network given that 2009 and regularly partakes in business speaking engagements.
Daivs spoke with Fox News Wednesday to talk about how his life has actually altered as an outcome of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Fox News: How has your everyday routine altered considering that social distancing measures began?
Davis: I would just go to the NFL (Network) studio once a week and after that I would take a trip a fair bit to do appearances and stuff like that. You know, business speaking engagements, so that’s obviously changed.
As far as the important things I do at home, I still get up at– I generally get up at 5 a.m., I get up a little later now. I get up at 5: 30 a.m. I like to get my workouts in before I start the day. I [used to] take the kids to school, whatever it is and then tackle my day, which is a lot of telephone call, it’s a great deal of studying. You understand with football you’re constantly researching stuff, taking a look at the games, players, transactions, all that things. So in some ways, a few of the things that I’ve been doing, I’m still doing, but I’m doing more of.
However it is various since the kids are home and so now it’s a lot of hanging out with them and despite the fact that I have work to do and I’m attempting to get ahead of a great deal of things, they see you and it resembles “Well, OK you can’t go anywhere so let’s play throughout the day.’ I’m investing a lot of time with kids.
I attempt to look at this time as a method to get ahead of whatever. So I went through my files and I cleared out all of my workplace files. From a business standpoint, I’m doing all this stuff– preparing yourself for when life returns to regular.
SUPER BOWL MVP TERRELL DAVIS DONATES $400 G WORTH OF PRODUCTS TO FEEDING AMERICA: ‘IT’S ABOUT LEADING BY EXAMPLE’
Fox News: What are the most significant obstacles in doing your task throughout this crisis?
Davis: Well the most significant obstacle is that I make the majority of my money taking a trip. If I do not take a trip, I do not make cash, so that’s certainly a big challenge. But it really is the human touch, you understand, the actual interactions of simply being out. Whatever [it] is, we like to just be out in society and I think that’s simply hard for anybody to cover their minds around not having the ability to do things as typical.
We are social animals and we much like to be around people. That’s simply tough for us to handle. The social component to it is just very various.
16 Dec 2001: Terrell Davis #30 of the Denver Broncos is pressed by the defense of the Kansas City Chiefs during the game at Arrowhead Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. (Elsa/Allsport).
Fox News: What do you miss the most about life before this began?
Davis: It just feels odd, and I make sure everybody can associate with, simply not having the easy things.
Even having our grandparents over, my kids’ grandparents. They can’t even come over so that is strange for everyone. And then if you have kids, we have three kids and people that have kids can relate– it is tough to tell them they can’t go anywhere therefore then you resemble “What are your options?” Now they’re home, you can only get them to do so much school work and math and reading. Now it’s films and it’s iPads and all these electronic devices and stuff you attempt to keep away from. So you’re trying to pass the time however you’re attempting to make good of it.
We will always remember how odd this feels. I do not understand if we’ll have the ability to inform somebody about this one day when we age. It’s so bizarre.
Fox News: What surprised you most about how your daily life has altered?
Davis: No one knows (when life will go back to regular) so you need to prepare your mind for … yeah, possibly there is some semblance of normalcy but I anticipate this thing to stick around quite deep. It simply feels like it needs to, at least from the mask stand point, a minimum of from the major events, however that effects everything we do. Our sports, that effects still, even at work, there are certain jobs where people still have to have a big quantity of individuals collected and they’re not going to have the ability to do that so this thing is going to be– it seems like it’s going to leave a pretty huge path of damage once it’s over with and I think we’re simply bracing to see how we’re going to deal with it.
I simply try to remain positive … I try to do things that I can put good energy towards and not think of it.
Fox News: How do you blow off steam?
Davis: Either I’m doing workouts and after that I do, which truly helps, is use this ball, which generally [helps with] muscle release … I utilize that an hour a day. It’s not actually– I do not really practice meditation, I used to, however it permits me to unwind with the amount of pressure it puts on my muscles. It injures so excellent, I’m telling you … you feel so great after you’ve done that.
If I’m working, you understand I’m a worker bee, so if I’m working towards developing a talk or in my office doing something that is positive, something that is trying to advance my talk, that’s always excellent.
And After That, when I’m with the kids, just having fun with them– playing basketball in the backyard, that’s a method to relieve the stress. There’s a lot of methods to ease stress. We’re most likely on our 3rd puzzle now that we’ve put together and I enjoy puzzles, so that’s been fun.
It’s been challenging however, I’ve said it previously, this time I have to value it since when things get back to normal, I do not believe we’re ever going to have this type of time with our families, ever again. Just to be with them and have our kids house this amount of time, simply attempting to make the most of that.
Amazon employees have used data about the huge variety of independent sellers on its platform to produce competing items– in infraction of its own policies and declarations to Congress, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The retail giant, which has actually felt a surge of goodwill for providing essential goods across the country amidst the coronavirus pandemic and for preparing to work with 175,000 brand-new workers, has actually long claimed that it does not use proprietary data gathered from the site’s third-party sellers in order to produce and sell its own items.
However, according to interviews with more than 20 former workers of the tech company’s private-label organisation and files examined by the Journal, the business did do that. This kind of details is really beneficial, as it can assist Amazon figure out how to price something, what functions of an item to copy or whether it’s worth getting in an item segment based upon consumer interest, sources discussed to the Journal.
DIFFICULTY OF TRACKING COVID-19’s STEALTHY SPREAD REVEALED IN NEW RESEARCH STUDY
The Journal cites one example of Amazon employees gaining access to documents and information about a bestselling car-trunk organizer sold by a third-party supplier. That data consisted of total sales, how much the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping, and just how much Amazon made on each sale. Later, Amazon’s private-label arm presented its own car-trunk organizers.
” Like other merchants, we look at sales and store information to provide our clients with the best possible experience. Nevertheless, we strictly restrict our workers from utilizing non-public, seller-specific data to figure out which personal label items to release. While we do not think these claims are accurate, we take these allegations really seriously and have actually launched an internal examination,” an Amazon representative informed Fox News through e-mail.
In addition, the company’s representative pointed out that typical practices to name a few retailers with substantial personal brand name offerings include understanding the sales volume for products in their stores. The business also pointed out that third-party sellers now represent 58 percent of sales on the platform.
JEFF BEZOS SPENDS ANOTHER $16 MILLION TO BUILD New York City MEGA-MANSION
Although Amazon has stated it has constraints in place to avoid its private-label team from accessing data on specific sellers in its Marketplace, former employees and a present one told the Journal that those guidelines weren’t evenly imposed– and workers found methods around them.
The logo design of Amazon is seen above. (Reuters).
” We knew we should not,” stated one previous worker who accessed the data and explained a pattern of utilizing it to release and benefit Amazon items.
Amazon, which has actually been under a microscope for prospective antitrust offenses at the federal level since at least last summertime, is likewise being investigated by European authorities for its third-party selling practices.
The company is most likely to face intense pressure from lawmakers and Huge Tech guard dogs.
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A barbershop and a hair salon in the same northern California town chose to defy the statewide stay-at-home order by opening for company amidst the coronavirus public health crisis, according to a report Wednesday.
It comes the exact same day Gov. Gavin Newsom stated lockdown steps would continue up until California bolsters its screening capability.
The owners of Charm Bar Hair Salon and Clip Cage, both in Auburn, about 33 miles northeast of Sacramento, claim they do not receive unemployment and that their applications for the Income Protection Program were denied, Fox 40 Sacramento reported.
” Just how much longer am I supposed to decrease the rabbit hole prior to I just throw in the towel and go back to work?” Charm Bar Hair salon owner Tisha Fernhoff informed Fox 40.
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Close-up image of barber’s hands with scissors cutting hair.
” I need to do what I need to do. I’m fighting to provide for my kids and myself and my household right now. It’s been very hard. I’m pregnant. I have children in the house,” Clip Cage owner Breann Curtis said.
” They require to do something. They require to assist us to open. People are losing their beauty parlors,” Curtis continued. “People are losing their hair salons. People are losing their business. That’s going to affect the economy, extremely.”
Following the lead from numerous Bay-Area counties, Newsom provided a statewide stay-at-home order on March 19, successfully shutting down all inessential companies throughout the state. Though the guv has insisted the lockdown should continue until information reveals a stable decrease in infections statewide, several counties have actually started gradually lifting their local stay-at-home orders.
In his press conference Wednesday, Newsom, a Democrat, stated President Trump agreed to send out critically required specimens swabs to California to start antibody testing, putting the state on target to increase its daily capacity from 14,500 to 25,000 tests daily by the end of April, the Los Angeles Times reported.
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA COUNTY WANTS NEWSOM TO RAISE STAY-AT-HOME ORDER FOR THEM BEFORE OTHERS
Hundreds of people were bought off beaches in northern California over the weekend for breaking shelter-in-place orders. In Pacifica, police said that roughly 45 percent of the vehicles counted near beach and trail locations were from locations outside of 5 miles from which they were signed up.. ( KTVU)
On The Other Hand, Ventura County allowed citizens to return to their beaches and public parks, offered they maintain appropriate social distancing measures.
Golf courses will likewise open, with staff members wearing individual protective equipment and connecting with visitors in a restricted capability, the Times reported.
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The county declared it’s prepared to resume the economy and is prepared for a prospective new wave in cases after using the time in lockdown to increase its stockpile of individual protective devices, increase its testing capacity and invest in a brand-new website that might accommodate care for more than 900 ill clients
But San Luis Obispo, known for its wine tasting in Paso Robles and scenic traveler spots in Morro Bay and Pismo Beach, could end up being a magnet.
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The House Small Business Committee on Thursday examined the difficulties small businesses have faced during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic — particularly how failures in the implementation of the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program led to many being unable to acquire forgivable loans before the pool of money ran out.
While restaurant chains such as Shake Shack were able to acquire millions of dollars in loans from the program, many small local businesses were left empty-handed. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., recalled speaking to constituents who hoped for assistance and received nothing, as he hammered the system and called for an investigation.
PELOSI ACCUSES MCCONNELL, GOP OF HOLDING UP CORONAVIRUS FUNDS
“They got tricked! They got led astray! They got bamboozled! And they are, respectfully, Madam Chair, mad as hell,” Espaillat said. “I am mad as hell!”
The New York Democrat who represents Upper Manhattan and part of the Bronx said he could “literally count on one hand” the small business owners who did get help under the CARES Act. He blamed this on improper use of the program and called for those responsible to be held accountable.
“This is a major problem. It is absolutely not how any of intended for this program to work,” he said. “The actors who perpetrated this must be investigated and they must face consequences.”
The meeting came ahead of a full House vote on another stimulus bill that would provide additional funds to keep the program going so more businesses could apply.
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Espaillat suggested that moving forward, more local lenders should be allowed to participate so that business owners who do not have relationships with larger financial institutions can get help.
“We must do better,” he said. “We must bail out Main Street!”
Covid-19 has vaulted a Harvard professor into the global ranks of billionaires.
Timothy Springer, the soft-spoken, garden-tending, Chinese rock-collecting immunologist made some headlines a couple years ago when it got out that he was the 4th largest shareholder in Moderna, a company that was launching the largest IPO in biotech history. Springer, who made his first fortune from selling his company LeukoSite to Millennium Pharmaceuticals for $100 million, had made an early $5 million investment in the company in 2010 after founder and fellow Harvard scientist Derrick Rossi asked him for advice on how to pitch to venture capitalists, who had consistently passed on his mRNA-based idea. Eventually Rossi found a taker in Flagship, who wanted to build not simply a biotech but essentially a new pharma giant. Moderna went public in 2018. Springer made $400 million overnight.
Timothy Springer
Then, this year, Moderna emerged as the frontrunner to build a vaccine for Covid-19, quickly becoming the first company to put their vaccine in the clinic and recently nabbing a nearly $500 million contract from BARDA. As the virus spread and shook the global economy by its roots, investors poured money into the biotech. The stock shot up 152% in three-and-a-half months. CEO Stéphane Bancel, with his stock options, soon became a billionaire.
And yesterday, Bloomberg reported, so did Springer. His investment in a friend’s startup is now worth over $800 million. That’s a 17,000% return. With his other funds, that puts him into the biotech billionaires club, alongside folks like Robert Duggan and Patrick Soon-Shiong.
It also puts him alongside Zoom founder Eric Yuan and DocuSign chairman Keith Krach in the perhaps uncomfortable but certainly enviable position of passively profiting off a pandemic that has shut down the global economy and cost 20 million jobs in the US alone.
Springer said his money, though, won’t stay in pocket. Most of it will go to the Institute for Protein Innovation, an open source hub he and colleague Andrew Kruse founded several years ago to design antibodies and other proteins as cures for intractable diseases.
@moderna_tx is led by great team. Since I live a relatively modest academic lifestyle it’s going to @IPI_Protein. I like active philanthropy even more than active investing. https://t.co/ekGrFTe8DI
— timothy springer (@timothyspringer) April 23, 2020
It suits his academic lifestyle, he said, one centered on a single home in Chestnut Hill, academics, gardening and collecting gongshi, or scholar’s rocks. Still, if Moderna emerges with a vaccine for this once-in-a-century virus, part of the credit may belong to Springer, and to some advice — and $5 million — he gave to a younger colleague a decade ago. — Jason Mast
Volunteers in NIH trial get second shot of Moderna’s vaccine
Twenty eight days have passed since volunteers in Seattle received their first shot of the first Covid-19 vaccine to be tested in humans. And investigators are now welcoming them back for the second injection.
The Phase I trial, conducted at Kaiser Permanente in Seattle and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, tests Moderna’s mRNA vaccine candidate. As safety is its main endpoint, the fact that it’s still going on is good news.
“The trial hasn’t been stopped. We know from the study protocol that if adverse events had happened, the protocol would have required that,” Lisa Jackson, a senior investigator at Kaiser who is leading the trial, told USA Today. “Therefore we presume those things haven’t happened.”
The second shot that volunteers will receive is intended to build on the immunogenicity given by the first primer shot, so that the body can produce antibodies more rapidly when it’s exposed to the real SARS-CoV-2.
Having enrolled 45 participants in the first round, the NIH is expanding the trial to include 60 more adults over the age of 56.
Moderna — which recently secured $483 million from BARDA to rapidly ramp up manufacturing and recruit 150 more staffers — has indicated that it intends to continue its breakneck development pace and launch a Phase II this quarter if the initial results come in positive. — Amber Tong
Can Farxiga protect Covid-19 patients from organ failure and death? AstraZeneca launches PhIII
As doctors begin to get a clearer picture of Covid-19’s clinical manifestations, the search for drugs to push back the most severe consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection has turned up unlikely candidates. In the latest example, AstraZeneca has launched a Phase III trial to test the ability of Farxiga, originally approved for diabetes, to reduce the risk of serious complications and organ failure.
Data from its extensive Farxiga program have shown that it has a protective effect in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), chronic kidney disease (CKD) and type 2 diabetes, AstraZeneca pointed out. Coincidentally, “cardiac, renal and metabolic comorbidities have been associated with poor outcomes and death in Covid-19 patients.”
The pharma giant is teaming up with Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute on the placebo-controlled trial, dubbed DARE-19. It will enroll patients who have a medical history of hypertension, atherosclerotic CV disease, HFrEF, CKD or T2D, and shoot for a direct measure of efficacy: time to first occurrence of death from any cause or new/worsened organ dysfunction.
All patients will receive standard-of-care therapy.
AstraZeneca has been active repurposing some of its biggest drugs for Covid-19, recently kicking off a pivotal trial for the BTK inhibitor Calquence. That’s on top of efforts to discover new antibody-based treatments that could be deployed earlier in disease progression. — Amber Tong
Pandemic impacts close to two-thirds of one CRO’s clinical sites
We’ve all heard, through updates from biopharma companies here and there, how the pandemic is weighing on clinical trials. But what’s the situation like from a bird’s eye view? A contract research organization has provided another data point.
ICON, which operates in 40 countries, reported in its quarterly update that around 65% of its global clinical sites were impacted in some way by the pandemic.
“Furthermore, we are seeing Site ID & enrollment delays due to site closures and movement restrictions on patients. We are proactively reviewing and agreeing to alternative approaches with customers on a study-by-study basis, including remote and risk based monitoring and ‘at home’ services delivered through our Symphony Clinical Research group,” the company wrote.
Execs are adopting a cost containment plan to weather the crisis, including salary reductions, a recruitment freeze, cutting contractors and other expenditures.
The silver lining is that operations in China, which began having issues in February, are seeing conditions improve since mid-March with sites re-opening and monitoring activities resuming. — Amber Tong
UK outlines nationwide study to test for virus, antibodies and gauge the scale of the outbreak
The UK will conduct a large national study to survey the rate of Covid-19 infection in its population — which should yield crucial numbers to inform when it can relax lockdown measures.
Over 300,000 people will be tested regularly for the coronavirus over the next year for the virus via self-administered swabs, 1,000 of whom will also be asked to provide blood samples to see if they’ve developed antibodies against the virus. Scientists at Oxford are in the process of validating an antibody test for the trial after finding that most of the kits the government has purchased give inaccurate results.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said the study should “continue to build up our understanding of this new virus,” such as the extent of community transmission and how long immunity lasts. A pilot will begin shortly involving 20,000 households.
IQVIA will dispatch its nurses to conduct home visits where they will ask the participants questions and, when an antibody test is involved, draw blood samples. — Amber Tong
Chinese vaccine developer notches loan and land to scale up manufacturing as human study gets underway
Sinovac — one of two Chinese developers to get IND clearance for a coronavirus vaccine trial in recent days — has quickly racked up new loans and land to manufacture up to 100 million shots a year.
The Bank of Beijing provided an $8.5 million (RMB$60 million) credit line to match Sinovac’s own investment while the city government gave it access to 70,000 square meters of land in the Daxing district. The biotech plans to build a large production complex for multiple products, with one plant devoted to the coronavirus vaccine if it proves effective in trials.
“It took one, two weeks for the (local government) decision,” an anonymous exec told Reuters. “Previously, two years wouldn’t have been long enough to complete negotiations.”
The speed underscores the urgency for protection against a deadly disease that’s killed thousands in China and more than 180,000 worldwide.
Sinovac is a Nasdaq-listed company that markets vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B and H1N1 influenza domestically. — Amber Tong
Azar relied on trusted aide and sidelined Hahn in early days of coronavirus response — reports
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn was excluded from the coronavirus task force early in the US outbreak on HHS secretary Alex Azar’s order, Reuters reported. Rather, the former industry exec tapped his chief of staff, who had to coordinate his agency’s response.
Brian Harrison had worked in the office of the deputy HHS secretary in the George W. Bush administration — overlapping with Azar’s earlier HHS tenure — and held other federal positions before going off to run businesses in Texas, including a stint breeding labradoodles, according to the Wall Street Journal. He was recruited back to the HHS in 2018 and promoted to chief of staff last June.
Before Vice President Pence took over from Azar as the head of the coronavirus task force, he reportedly served as the key manager through whom “everyone had to report up.” Some White House officials apparently called him “the dog breeder,” sources told Reuters.
The new reports intensify some apparent in-fighting within the top departments tasked with tackling the biggest public health crisis the country has seen in years. Rick Bright, until recently the chief of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — another HHS unit — said he was ousted because he stood against “drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.” Specifically, he cited his cautious stance on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump touted as potential game-changers without definitive evidence. — Amber Tong
Considering that the start of the coronavirus break out, thousands of New York City citizens with signs of the disease it triggers have called for ambulances, just to die before or just after the EMTs showed up.
Why? The specialists and the information recommend the factors are linked to the clients’ house addresses– but likewise to results of the infection on the body that have actually entered into better focus only after six weeks of deaths. Numerous clients probably didn’t know how ill they actually were.
NBC News reviewed information from Emergency Medical Services, the department of the city’s fire department that handles 911 calls, showing that the number of heart calls– requires patients whose hearts have stopped or are near death– has actually increased since the start of the pandemic, as has the number of those calls that end in death. The rise is especially visible in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Full coverage of the coronavirus break out
On March 23, EMS call volume started increasing to record levels, from 4,000 on an average day to more than 6,500 calls a day.
The fire department’s chief of emergency medical services, Lillian Bonsignore, stated at the time, “I have actually been in this occupation for about 30 years, and I have actually never seen anything like this in my whole profession– or in my life, for that matter.”
From March 1 to April 13, bad neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens tape-recorded 2 to 3 times the number of cardiac calls compared to the exact same duration in 2019, with three to five times as lots of patients passing away.
From March 1 to April 13, 2019, almost 60 percent of heart call patients in the borough of Queens made it through. This year throughout the exact same period, 70 percent passed away.
Professionals say that patients in those poor areas are more likely to have hidden conditions like heart disease and diabetes that can make coronavirus infection lethal and that they might be wary of seeking healthcare till an emergency situation occurs due to the fact that of the expense. The communities likewise have higher varieties of people per residence and lots of multigenerational households, assisting the spread of transmittable illness.
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A look at the city’s poverty rates by ZIP code and information from the fire department’s 911 dispatch system reveals the link. In the Bronx areas encompassing POSTAL CODE 10456, 10467 and 10468, 28 percent to 38 percent of citizens live below the hardship line, compared to a citywide rate of 18 percent. In those POSTAL CODE, there were 114 heart calls and 46 deaths a year earlier. This year, over the very same March 1-to-April 13 period, there were 346 cardiac calls and 223 deaths.
In the Rockaways, a location of Queens, the hardship rate is close to 20 percent, and 60 percent of the population recognizes as black or Hispanic, both groups hit hard by COVID-19, the illness associated with the coronavirus. There were 76 heart calls and 35 deaths a year ago. This year, the overalls were 204 heart calls and 151 deaths.
In Brooklyn’s East New york city, the poverty rate techniques 25 percent, and more than 90 percent of the population identifies as black or Hispanic. There were 79 cardiac calls with 34 deaths last year, compared to 168 cardiac calls and 114 deaths this year.
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The information dramatically contrast with the numbers from affluent lower Manhattan. In ZIP codes that cover the financial district, Tribeca and parts of SoHo, the hardship rate averages 8.8 percent and more than two-thirds of citizens are white. In 2015, there were 30 cardiac calls with 12 deaths, and this year there were 42 heart calls with 23 deaths. There were more calls and more deaths, but absolutely nothing like the uptick in poorer, nonwhite areas.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, called the information significant, saying, “This infection has entered our society and merely exposed the structural weak points and the inequities and the variations that were currently there.”
Lung capacity
However Vasan and Dr. Eili Klein, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency situation Medication, both stated other, non-demographic factors also fed the spike in heart calls.
They stated messaging to members of the public early in the break out about avoiding medical facilities unless they were very ill probably led individuals to stay at home with lesser signs.
As medical professionals’ understanding of the illness enhanced, they found that numerous patients had actually significantly reduced lung capacity long before they showed those severe symptoms that were expected to make them call 911.
Klein stated COVID-19 can cut lung capacity by as much as 50 percent prior to a client even knows it, like a kind of “cryptic” pneumonia. People can feel sick but not brief of breath.
” It’s attacking the lungs in such a way that’s not completely giving all the signals to your immune system that it’s assaulting the lungs, so the lungs are sort of acting frequently,” Klein stated.
Vasan said this concealed phenomenon can cause a sudden decline in a COVID-19 patient’s health, the kind that elicits a 911 call when it’s far too late. “Individuals are at home with these actually low oxygen levels,” he stated, “and then they hit that tipping point, and it just gets beyond the point of return– when it comes to this data, the point of heart attack.”
A doctor who has been dealing with patients at one of New York City’s busiest healthcare facilities, Richard Levitan, wrote in a New york city Times viewpoint piece about patients he treated who had symptoms for extended periods prior to they went to the health center.
” To my awe,” Levitan composed, “most patients I saw stated they had been sick for a week approximately with fever, cough, indigestion and tiredness, but they just became brief of breath the day they pertained to the hospital.”
” We are simply beginning to recognize that COVID pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call ‘silent hypoxia’– ‘quiet’ since of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature,” he wrote.
Vasan and Klein both stated EMS did the best it could in March and April given the hand it was dealt.
” I believe our EMS operators are heroes, our FDNY are heroes,” Vasan said, “and they did the very best and they’ve been doing the very best with a very challenging set of situations.”
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Doctors are beginning to notice that blood clots could be another troubling complication for patients who are hospitalized with coronavirus.
The clots present the latest challenge for doctors working to understand the new virus that is known to cause respiratory disease. These clots are being found in younger patients and can result in sudden strokes, according to reports Wednesday.
“It’s very striking how much this disease causes clots to form,” Dr. J Mocco, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York, told Reuters.
NEARLY ALL NY CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS SUFFERED UNDERLYING HEALTH ISSUE, STUDY FINDS
(Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press via AP)” src=”https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/04/640/320/AP20113643137008.jpg?ve=1&tl=1″>
Resident doctor Kelvin Lou attends to a patient in a COVID suspect room in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at St. Paul’s hospital in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia on April 21.
(Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press via AP)
Mocco said he saw 32 stroke patients with large blood blockages in the brain, and at least half tested positive for the virus. Five of the patients had no risk factors for strokes and were under the age of 49, which he said was “Very, very atypical.”
Dr. Hooman Poor, a lung specialist at the hospital, noticed blood was not flowing well through the lungs of 14 patients on ventilators, which he determined was due to clotting.
“I feel like all these patients have blood clots in their lungs,’” Poor said, according to the news organization.
On April 13, a study published by researchers in the Netherlands found that 31 percent of intensive-care unit coronavirus patients they observed had a complication associated with clotting. The study described the findings as “remarkably high.”
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Michael Reagan, a 49-year-old COVID-19 patient in New York, was informed by a pulmonologist that he had dozens of blood clots throughout his lungs.
“It feels like a toxin is in my body,” Reagan told Business Insider. “I had no idea a blood clot could hurt so bad.”
Certain treatments could involve having patients take high doses of a blood-thinning drug to prevent the clotting from appearing, although they haven’t been proven, according to Reuters.
Tony Award-nominated actor Nick Cordero has had his right leg amputated after suffering complications from the coronavirus, including clotting, his wife said earlier this month.
“We took him off blood thinners but that again was going to cause some clotting in the right leg, so the right leg will be amputated today,” she added.
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Blood thinners on high-risk patients may also lead to bleeding in the brain or certain vital organs, health officials told the news organization.
While clotting can happen in anyone who stays idle on a ventilator for long periods of time, doctors said it appears to show up sooner in COVID-19 patients.
While wearing masks could help reduce the spread of coronavirus, there is some risk that fit and healthy people could find themselves at greater risk of infection by wearing them, a medic has warned.
Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said it would make sense to advise the public to wear masks on a voluntary basis to reduce the chance of the spread of coronavirus.
But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there is a risk that fit and healthy people could be increasing their chance of infection by wearing a mask that encourages them to touch their face.
His comments come as the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was expected to discuss the usage of masks in a meeting on Thursday.
“There’s no research evidence to support wearing masks if you are basically fit and well,” said Prof Marshall.
“Indeed if people wear masks there’s a risk they play around with it, they play with their eyes more and maybe you’re even at a higher risk of picking up an infection.
“However it is common sense that if they are coughing and spluttering then it makes complete sense to wear masks in order to protect other people.”
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He went on: “I think the guidance that we’re expecting to hear is that the wearing of face masks is a voluntary activity not mandated and it certainly makes a lot of sense to focus limited resources that we have at the moment on those who have greatest need and that’s the health professionals.
“This sophisticated kit is likely to be more rigorous, more useful, but actually it’s perfectly reasonable to wear a bandanna around your mouth or whatever, that will work, it won’t be quite as good but it will be good enough.”
Also on Thursday morning, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said no new decision had been made on wearing masks ahead of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meeting.
He told BBC Breakfast: “Sage is meeting today but we haven’t yet had that advice as ministers yet.
“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and prejudge what will come out of Sage just yet. There’s no change at the moment.”
On Wednesday, health secretary Matt Hancock said he “can’t promise” that everyone across the UK will be given free protective masks if scientific advice dictates that they should be worn.
Hancock was responding to a question in the Commons from Labour former minister Hilary Benn, who asked whether members of the public would be expected to source their own masks if they are required to wear them in certain situations by government guidance.
The health secretary responded: “We’ll follow the advice, we’ll listen to what the Sage advisory group says on masks and then we will implement that.
“I can’t promise that we will give everybody free masks, I mean that would be an extraordinary undertaking, and we do have to make sure that we have supplies available especially for health and social care staff, where the scientific advice throughout has been that the wearing of masks is necessary in those circumstances and we’ve got to make sure the provision is there for them.”
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