The coronavirus is spreading rapidly throughout Brazil, overwhelming a health care system that is ill prepared to handle a pandemic of this magnitude and proving especially deadly for the medical workers on the front lines.
At least 116 nurses have died in this country of 210 million from Covid-19, according to Brazil’s Federal Nursing Council—the highest toll anywhere. That is more than the 107 nurses who have died in the U.S., where the total death count of people succumbing to the pandemic is about six times more than in Brazil. In Italy, which has about twice as many total deaths as Brazil, 39 nurses have died, according to Italy’s National Federation of Nurses, or Fnopi.
Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to make any coronavirus vaccine universally available once it’s developed, part of an effort to defuse criticism of his government’s response to a pandemic that has killed more than 315,000 people around the world.
In a speech on Monday to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, Xi called for greater international cooperation in fighting the pandemic. He also said China will provide $2 billion over two years to support the fight. Taiwan dropped a request to be included in the gathering after objections from Beijing.
A senior Chinese government official confirmed Friday that authorities ordered laboratories to destroy samples of coronavirus in early January.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused Chinese officials of ordering the samples’ destruction as part of the regime’s cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in its early stages.
Pompeo said on April 22 that China “censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples.” He offered more specificity on May 6, stating that China’s National Health Commission [NHC] ordered virus samples destroyed on Jan. 3.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” said Andy McMurray, co-founder and CIO of Medal, an AI-based software company developing tools for health care, during an interview with Healthcare IT News.
This is especially true in the operating room, where surgery teams at the University of Iowa Hospital have reduced surgical site infection by 74% using DASH Analytics’ high-definition care platform (HDCP). This system observes data from the operation in real time and compares it to a patient’s history and its own infection models. Toward the end of the procedure, it automatically provides the surgeon with recommendations to reduce infection during wound closure. Furthermore, it notes whether the surgeon follows its suggestions or not and compares that to the outcome of the patient. This information is then used to both improve its infection model and improve the surgeon’s own performance in future surgeries.
Advances in AI build off of each other. One breakthrough opens the doors for more possibilities in the future, which in turn leads to even more breakthroughs at an exponential rate. Just as the Industrial Revolution automated back-breaking physical labor, the AI Revolution is poised to automate mind-numbing mental labor. Based on what we’ve seen in the last 10 years alone, we can expect to see this boom very soon.
Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews Dr. Robert Hariri, MD, PhD, surgeon, bio-medical scientist and highly successful serial entrepreneur in two technology sectors: bio-medicine and aerospace.
Dr. hariri utilizes biomedicine to aid human longevity:
Dr. Hariri is Chairman, Founder, and CEO, of Celularity, Inc., a clinical-stage cell therapeutics company developing allogeneic cellular therapies, engineered from the postpartum human placenta, in cancer immuno-therapy and functional regeneration, which recently got initial clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin early-stage clinical trials on a potential treatment for Covid-19.
Dr. Hariri is also Co-Founder and Vice Chairman, of Human Longevity, Inc., a company merging extensive amounts of human genotype and phenotype data with machine learning, so that it can help develop new ways to fight diseases associated with aging.
Dr. Hariri served as Chairman, Founder, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief Executive Officer of Celgene Cellular Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb), one of the world’s largest human cellular therapeutics companies, where he pioneered the use of stem cells to treat a range of life threatening diseases and has made transformative contributions in the field of tissue engineering.
US President Barack Obama called the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a threat to global security on Tuesday and broadly expanded the US response by ordering thousands of troops to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and build treatment centres. He called on other countries to quickly provide more helpers, supplies and money. “If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us,” Obama declared after briefings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Obama acted under pressure from regional leaders and international aid organisations who pleaded for a heightened US role in confronting the deadly virus, especially in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. “In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic,” Obama said. “It’s spiralling out of control, it is getting worse.“ The stepped-up US response includes sending 3,000 troops to the region, including medics and corpsmen for treatment and training, engineers to help build treatment facilities and logistics specialists to assist in patient transportation. Obama also announced that Major General Darryl Williams, head of US Army Africa, will head a military command centre based in Liberia. The announcement came the same day the World Health Organisation warned that the number of West African Ebola cases could begin doubling every three weeks and that the crisis could end up costing nearly 1 billion US Dollars to contain. Nearly 5,000 people have become ill from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognised in March. The World Health Organisation says it anticipates the figure could rise to more than 20,000. Obama described task ahead as “daunting” but said what gives him hope is that “the world knows how to fight this disease.“ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/045def289101ceb2e47170324839d408 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’ — George W. Bush warned about getting ahead of something like COVID-19 way back in 2005. » Subscribe to NowThis: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe » Sign up for our newsletter KnowThis to get the biggest stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox: https://go.nowth.is/KnowThis
In US news and current events today, listen to Pres. Bush urgently stress the importance of being prepared for a pandemic back in 2005. In this clip, Pres. George W. Bush addressed the Nat’l Institutes of Health about having a game plan to fight future pandemics. Pres. Bush was reportedly alarmed after reading a history book about the 1918 flu pandemic where millions had died. Out of that interest came a grand outline for future administrations to follow in response to a global pandemic.
Listening in the audience that day was Dr. Anthony Fauci, dir. of the Nat’l Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and current leader in the fight against COVID-19 today.
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There may be hope yet for a universal flu vaccine — one powerful dose of immunisation that can provide long-lasting protection for multiple influenza strains, all in a single shot.
A discovery like that would be a holy grail for public health, and after more than a decade of careful research, a specific version called FLU-v is now moving into the last rounds of clinical testing.
So far, researchers say the results have been “very encouraging”, and the vaccine has successfully passed phase I and phase II clinical trials. Although trials in these phases are limited to assessing the safety of the vaccine, there’s also evidence it might be effective.
According to Li and Spitzer, running on a treadmill, or performing another sustained aerobic exercise—like dancing or kickboxing—on a regular basis might actually enhance motor skill-based learning.
When comparing the brains of mice that exercised versus those who did not, Li and Spitzer found that specific neurons switched their chemical signals (neurotransmitters), after exercising, which led to improved learning for motor skill-specific acquisition.
While physical exercise is proven to promote motor skill learning in normal individuals as well as those with neurological disorders, the mechanism of action is unclear. The study found that that one just week of voluntary wheel running enhances the acquisition of motor skills in normal adult mice. Voluntary being the keyword here.
A group of tiny RNA that should attack the virus causing COVID-19 when it tries to infect the body are diminished with age and chronic health problems, a decrease that likely helps explain why older individuals and those with preexisting medical conditions are vulnerable populations, investigators report.
MicroRNAs play a big role in our body in controlling gene expression, and also are a front line when viruses invade, latching onto and cutting the RNA, the genetic material of the virus, says Dr. Sadanand Fulzele, aging researcher in the Department of Medicine and Center for Healthy Aging at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
But with age and some chronic medical conditions, the attacking microRNA numbers dwindle, reducing our ability to respond to viruses, says Dr. Carlos M. Isales, co-director of the MCG Center for Healthy Aging and chief of the MCG Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism.
