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New study: Poor quality hydroxychloroquine a warning for future COVID cures | American Enterprise Institute

When President Trump promoted the malaria drug
hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19 in the spring, demand
for the product jumped. Most of the subsequent debate has been about the
efficacy of the drug as a treatment for prophylaxis for COVID-19. But arguably as
important is what happens to the market when a new cure or treatment is
developed. The market for hydroxychloroquine provides some lessons.

A pharmacist displays a box of Hydroxychloroquine at the CHR Centre Hospitalier Regional de la Citadelle Hospital amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Liege, Belgium, June16, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman

As I report in my new paper, the quality of the hydroxychloroquine available on the web was not universally good. Over three months (late April to early July) the drug was procured from international web pharmacies. Using a handheld spectrometer, quality was assessed in line with previous peer review studies. 48 samples were bought

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Medicine
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Link between Covid cluster and call centre outbreak

M&D Green pharmacy in Port Glasgow

Image caption

The pharmacy in John Wood Street is one of two businesses linked to the cluster

A link has been established between a cluster of Covid-19 cases in Inverclyde and an earlier outbreak at a call centre in Lanarkshire.

NHS Greater Glasgow said 13 people had tested positive in the health board area, a rise of two since Thursday.

It also confirmed that one of those cases was linked to the Sitel call centre outbreak in Motherwell.

Staff at M&D Green Pharmacy in Port Glasgow have tested positive as well as a worker at Amazon’s Gourock site.

Some individuals visited a number of businesses in the Greater Glasgow area, and health officials have warned they may have been infectious at the time.

The businesses included The Botany bar and restaurant in Maryhill Road, Glasgow, and Sweeney’s Cruises in West Dunbartonshire, both on Sunday.

Individuals also visited The Queen of

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Medicine
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The Doctor Behind the Disputed COVID Data

Several physicians who worked with Dr. Sapan Desai during his residency at Duke University Medical Center said it became standard practice to double check anything he said about a patient. (Pete Kiehart/The New York Times)
Several physicians who worked with Dr. Sapan Desai during his residency at Duke University Medical Center said it became standard practice to double check anything he said about a patient. (Pete Kiehart/The New York Times)

A college degree at 19. A medical school graduate with a Ph.D. at 27.

By the time he completed training in vascular surgery in 2014, Dr. Sapan Desai had cast himself as an ambitious physician, an entrepreneur with an MBA and a prolific researcher published in medical journals.

Then the novel coronavirus hit, and Desai seized the moment. With a Harvard professor, he produced two studies in May that almost instantly disrupted multiple clinical trials amid the pandemic.

One study’s findings were particularly dramatic, reporting that anti-malaria drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump promoted, were linked to increased deaths of COVID-19 patients. But that study and another were retracted in June by the renowned

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Medicine
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‘A day of hope.’ Pence visits Miami for launch of COVID vaccine trial.

With President Donald Trump’s poll numbers flagging in Florida and the state continuing to struggle with one of the nation’s highest rates of new COVID-19 cases, Vice President Mike Pence visited the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine on Monday to focus attention on one of the pandemic’s few potential bright spots: the rapid development of a vaccine against the disease.

Noting the president’s emphasis on speed, Pence said the federal government has positioned itself through public-private collaborations with drug makers to ramp up mass production of a vaccine at the first sign of its safety and effectiveness.

“We’re actually having these companies produce the vaccines as we speak, and as soon as they’re confirmed to be safe and effective we’ll have tens of millions of doses ready to distribute across the country,” Pence said, after he met with doctors and researchers at UM’s medical campus in downtown

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Medicine
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‘We have to learn how to live with COVID’

Hundreds of messages from parents and educators flooded in as soon as the Chicago Public Schools’ first fall reopening feedback meeting Monday opened up to the audience for questions — many doubting the district’s safety protocols and wanting more detail for what happens when someone in school tests positive for COVID-19.

In response to many of the concerns, CPS officials repeatedly highlighted the district’s proposal to split students into “pods” of 15 to minimize contact with other classmates.

CPS CEO Janice Jackson said coronavirus will likely be a concern “not just for a few months until a magical vaccination appears” but for the next year-and-a-half to two years.

“Even with what we know about COVID and the risk being minimal for children, the thought of one child getting it freaks everyone out, so we want to make sure people understand we take that seriously,” Jackson said. “But I think the

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Health
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Pet cat in UK catches Covid from its owners

There is no evidence to suggest that pets directly transmit the virus to humans (and this is not the cat that the virus has been detected in) - AFP
There is no evidence to suggest that pets directly transmit the virus to humans (and this is not the cat that the virus has been detected in) – AFP
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..

A pet cat has fallen ill with coronavirus in the UK after apparently catching Covid-19 from its owners.

The infection was confirmed following tests at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, on July 22, and is the first confirmed case of an animal infection with the coronavirus strain in the UK.

Yvonne Doyle, medical director at Public Health England (PHE), said: “This is the first case of a domestic cat testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK but should not be a cause for alarm.

“The investigation into this case suggests that the infection was spread from humans to animal, and not the other way round.

“At this time, there

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Medicine
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How kids and teens are coping with screen time as they learn during COVID quarantine

Since mid-March, when most schools around the U.S. closed due to COVID-19 precautions, kids and teens have had to quickly adapt to learning virtually — which means more sitting and more screen time. Hanging out with friends after class or on weekends became a thing of the past as health officials called for social distancing measures.

The last pandemic occurred over a hundred years ago, well before “screen-time” became a thing. Though the health implications of increased screen time among young people has been studied over the past decade, the effects of more time spent online as a substitute for in-school learning, hasn’t yet been mined.

Doctors in many fields, however, such as physical medicine, psychology and ophthalmology, are already spotting signs and symptoms that could indicate future trends of how increased screen time for virtual learning, combined with a reduction of in-person interaction, is affecting young people’s lives.

Dr.

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Health
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Can You Get COVID Again? It’s Very Unlikely, Experts Say

Megan Kent near her home in Salem, Mass., on July 17, 2020. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)
Megan Kent near her home in Salem, Mass., on July 17, 2020. (Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times)

The anecdotes are alarming. A woman in Los Angeles seemed to recover from COVID-19 but weeks later took a turn for the worse and tested positive again. A New Jersey doctor claimed several patients healed from one bout only to become reinfected with the coronavirus. And another doctor said a second round of illness was a reality for some people, and was much more severe.

These recent accounts tap into people’s deepest anxieties that they are destined to succumb to COVID over and over, feeling progressively sicker, and will never emerge from this nightmarish pandemic. And these stories fuel fears that we won’t be able to reach herd immunity — the ultimate destination where the virus can no longer find enough victims to pose a deadly threat.

But the anecdotes are just that

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Medicine
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Social media firms let misinformation spread ‘virulently’ on their platforms during Covid, say MPs

TELEMMGLPICT000228734180.jpeg
TELEMMGLPICT000228734180.jpeg

Social media giants allowed misinformation about coronavirus to spread “virulently” across their platforms because duty of care laws are still not in place to regulate them, MPs say today.

The Commons culture committee cited evidence of a range of harms from dangerous hoax treatments and anti-vaccination propaganda to conspiracy theories that led to attacks on 5G engineers.

It said an online harms regulator must be appointed now to hold social media platforms to account and warned that until the proposed duty of care was introduced, internet companies would not be compelled to act.

MPs also accused the platforms of using business models which disincentivise action against misinformation while affording opportunities for some to monetise misleading content.

Julian Knight, chair of the committee, said: “We are calling on the Government to name the regulator now and get on with the ‘world-leading’ legislation on social media that we’ve long been promised.

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Medicine
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Covid Leaves Its Mark on Three Health Giants

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Health-care earnings season is firmly here, with reports now in from three pillars of the sector: pharmacy giant Walgreen Boots Alliance Inc., health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. and drug-and-device conglomerate Johnson & Johnson. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, each had a singular quarter. And while experiences varied given the different niches each of the companies occupy, taken together they present a comprehensive picture of the outbreak’s impact on the industry and the risks it still poses.

Walgreens, the first to report on July 9, was the hardest hit in many respects because its pharmacy counters are surrounded by retail offerings that were affected by economy-slowing efforts to contain the virus. The results also point to big trans-Atlantic differences in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. A stringent U.K. lockdown led to enormous sales declines at the company’s stores there. Varied and often shorter U.S. shutdowns kept

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Health