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Michigan Medicine begins collecting protective gear donations for health care workers and patients – MLive.com

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Xiaoxi Zhang unloads a suitcase filled with donations as Katie Doyle helps collect them at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Zhang walked from North Campus to bring whatever medical supplies she had herself. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

ANN ARBOR -- Some walked, some drove and other rode bikes to bring whatever medical supplies they had to donate to UM Hospitals amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The donation center at the North Campus Research Complex on the corner of Huron parkway and Plymouth road in Ann Arbor opened on Saturday at noon. Within the first two hours, volunteers had already collected donations from almost 150 cars.

"It's very touching to see so many people," said Katie Doyle, a Clinical Assistant Professor at UM's School of Social Work. Doyle, along with several other volunteers put on their protective gear and spent their day collecting donations.

The donation center is collecting several items, including disposable gloves, masks, gowns, surgical caps, foot covers, N95 masks, eye protective gear, hand sanitizer and bleach or microbial wipes.

Julie Smith, an AP Biology teacher at Greenhills School, reached out to her department looking for whatever supplies they had after a chaplain from her church reached out to her about the donation center.

Smith donated disposable gloves and plans on going back to Greenhills to collect whatever safety goggles they have to donate as well.

"Whatever we can do to help," said Smith.

The donation center will be open Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends at 2800 Plymouth road.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Andrew Stines unloads boxes of medical supplies that are being donated to Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Mary Jo Callan, Director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan helps to collect donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Donations are sorted out for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Mary Jo Callan, Director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan wears protective gear as she helps collect donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Kelly Schwartz, left, and Kristin Johnson help collect donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

A cart filled with protective gear sits outside at the donation center for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

UM Research Associate Fran Vandenbergh sorts donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Senior Facility Service Manager at the UM Medical school Maryellen Tracy, left, and Facility Assistant Andrew Stines await more cars to collect donations from for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Clinical Assistant Professor at the UM School of Social Work Katie Doyle helps to collect donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Xiaoxi Zhang walks to a donation center for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Zhang walked from North Campus to bring whatever medical supplies she had herself. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Volunteers help collect donations of medical supplies for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Clinical Assistant Professor at the UM School of Social Work Katie Doyle wears protective glasses with a Michigan "M" on them as she helps to collect donations for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

A respirator sits in a donation box for Michigan Medicine at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Michigan Medicine is asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

Jenna Kieser | jkieser@mlive.com

Mary Jo Callan, Director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan collects a donation from Zijin Chu, a student at UM at the North Campus Research Complex on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Chu rode her bike to the donation center to give a box of disposable masks her parents had sent her from Beijing. Michigan Medicine is are asking for donations of medical supplies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Supplies needed include disposable face masks, hand sanitizer, disposable gloves, among others.

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Michigan Medicine begins collecting protective gear donations for health care workers and patients - MLive.com

Folk medicine What this coronavirus pandemic teaches us – Philippine Star

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

I had an interesting conversation with the young medical anthropologist and columnist, Gideon Lasco, the other day. He had done research on folk medicine, and I hope it will get published soon. Our conversation is perhaps most relevant today especially with the country in the grip of the Coronavirus pandemic.

My reading of history tells me that during the Spanish regime, cholera and smallpox epidemics had occurred, killing hundreds, and they continued until the early part of the American regime and claimed, for instance, the life of Apolinario Mabini in a cholera outbreak in the 1900s.

My mother herself had smallpox, which poxed her face with shallow scars. Both diseases had been wiped out, but will they ever return the way polio has returned?

Gideon knows that many of the so-called folk medicine practices are not all that invalid for the herbolarios had a very good knowledge of our medicinal plants. In fact, I have wondered what the ancient Filipinos used for anesthesia; before the Spaniards came, they filed their teeth. They must have chewed some weed or root that numbed their gums. Much of the ancient knowledge on medicinal plants have of course been studied and codified by Chinese medicine.

Superstition I remember when someone in our neighborhood got sick, and offerings were made before the giant dalipawen tree which is believed to be inhabited by spirits. Theatangor offering consisted of a plate of gelatinous rice much like suman. In the middle was a shelled hard-boiled egg, a hand rolled cigar and betel nut. It is usually the head of the family, usually the grandfather who presented the offering, invoking a plea for the spirit to banish the ailment of the family member. After he had gone, we the children in the neighborhood feasted on the offering. When I had a fever, the local herbolario came to our house to offer a prayer and then covered my body with nameless leaves. It was to him who the villagers went to first when they were ill, and if their condition did not improve, only then did they go to the doctor.

They also give a massage often with ground ginger mixed with coconut oil, particularly to the women who had just given birth. Together with these herbolarios were the faith healers who enjoyed a wider clientele. Two skeptics, the late Max Soliven and I were attended to by Tomas Blanche of Isabela; he kneaded Maxs shoulders with his fingers and extracted cholesterol; he pressed a spoon on my tummy and a syrupy liquid flowed out from my skin.

Disease travels; many pristine societies in South America did not have the infectious diseases like syphilis until the Conquistadors came. Ancient Egyptian mummies were found to have traces of diabetes, the diagnosis of it made easy only in this century, and so many of the human ailments that were traced to diabetes were treated properly. If there seems to be a diabetic epidemic today, it is because its diagnosis is now easy to make.

When I was in the Medical Corps in 1945, the most popular drugs were the sulfas. Antibiotics have just appeared. My eye doctor, Cesar Lopez observed, the Bubonic plague that killed millions during the Middle Ages would have been easily cured by penicillin. Indeed, science continues to find new ways to combat diseases. The words, cholesterol and nuclear medicine, were unknown in the 1940s. So too organ transplants. It will take a few months more, I hope, when a vaccine for this Coronavirus pandemic will be discovered.

Unless subsidized, a career in medicine is very expensive and all too often, doctors, particularly those in government, receive very little, for which reason, they opt to practice abroad where they get better pay. As specialists, they earn more but it takes years of practice to achieve that kind of reputation.

Then, there is the problem of expensive hospitals and medicines a problem already resolved in socialist countries where healthcare is free and the responsibility of the state.

During the tenure of Dr. Juan Flavier in the eighties as Health Secretary, he initiated a program of sending barefoot doctors to work in the villages prevention and correct hygienic practices warded off diseases, particularly the contagious.

Singapore and Cuba have been particularly successful in combatting COVID-19 primarily because their governments are efficient. One may argue that these are island states, small and therefore easy to govern. But it is more than this the healthcare systems in these countries afford their citizens protection and support in instances of widespread need. Cubas educational system, too, is worth examining for this country illustrates how, even with its economic problems, it is able to provide basic services to all its people.

In Italy, where the death toll is the highest in the world, many of these victims died alone, their burial postponed. The next few weeks will certainly show how much we have to pay for the incompetence of our leaders.

If we survive this pandemic and I pray we will, what can we learn from it?

First, we must learn to bear the cost and to prepare for future pandemics because they are not going to disappear even with the greatest advances made in science.

If we have the most accurate information early enough and widespread enough, then we can at least prepare for it. China kept this information to itself under that kind of dictatorial government, it seemed the right thing to do. We now reap the whirlwind.

This challenge like climate change is global and we need to cooperate with all countries, particularly those that can help us. Shutting off our borders will not help as much as shutting our streets and neighborhoods where the disease first appeared.

It is also the duty of these giant pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs that are available to the very poor; and finally and most importantly, we have to reform the political order and usher in a government very expensive perhaps that can attend to the social needs of our people. Capitalism may have to go, as the deadliest virus. Capitalism protects the rich and damns the poor.

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Folk medicine What this coronavirus pandemic teaches us - Philippine Star

Video Conferencing Increasingly Utilized in Law, Medicine, During COVID-19 Pandemic Pascack Press & Northern Valley Press – Pascack Press &…

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Teaneck-based attorney Sam Davis conducts an online deposition.

NEW JERSEYAs the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, continues to take its toll on many aspects of our life, the legal system is one of the venues that has had to adopt to the rapidly changing social landscape.

Last week, New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner announced that beginning March 16, there would be no new jury trials for 2 weeks, an action that was supported by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

As part of our continuing response to the spread of COVID-19, we are suspending municipal court sessions for a two-week period, Chief Justice Rabner said. Where it is possible to resolve court matters without compromising the health and safety of the public and court staff, we will continue to do so.

Judge Glenn Grant, acting administrative director of the Courts, said that the judicial system will use technological capabilities to continue court proceedings.

As such, to adhere to the issue of public safety, some law firms are now conducting motions, non-jury trials and some hearings remotely, with the use of video and telephonic equipment.

Whereas most attorneys are scrambling to get up to speed with this technology, Sam Davis, senior partner at Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, P.C., in Teaneck, who specializes in personal injury cases, has been using it for decades.

Davis made headlines worldwide with a landmark case in 1998, in which he was granted a ruling from (now retired) New Jersey Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Sciuto that allowed his client, Marin Turcinovic, a quadriplegic in a Chigago medical treatment facility and unable to travel, to view and testify at his medical malpractice trial in the Bergen County Courthouse via the internet.

Turcinovic was ultimately awarded $10 million, the reputed highest settlement for a personal injury case in the State of New Jersey.

At the time, Davis declared, The courts ruling is not only a victory for my client but also for the handicapped community. The decision provides an access to all those injured victims who might not otherwise be able to have their day in court.

Davis and his partners have been using internet technology for their cases ever since, and they have the capability of video-conferencing up to 30 people at once.

We are currently still available to see clients in our Teaneck location and our investigators are still visiting accident scenes and making house calls as needed, but we are shifting our office into a virtual configuration, Davis said. All of our employees will be able to work from home with the same efficiency that they do from their desks.

Davis predicts that as the insurance companies and defense lawyers become more comfortable with the technology, it will become the norm for the procedures that have traditionally been done in a judges chamber or open court, such as taking depositions, arguing motions, and conducting settlement conferences with the court.

Davis explained the capabilities of legal video-conferencing.

It allows us to meet and interact with clients face to face, which you cant do just by talking on the phone. We can also conference with investigators who are working cases and present visual materials that can determine the settlement amount we receive from insurance companies, said Davis.

So, these capabilities are persuasive and sometimes critical. When you present a motion, the impact of looking at the person who is speaking goes beyond words, he said.

A challenge faced by law firms that use internet technology is that older clients may not be familiar with it. Some seniors do not know how do things on a computer. So, Davis firm tutors their old school clients in the basics, and they have a system in place that allows clients to sign documents electronically that have to be filed with various authorities.They can do this with or without internet access.

Today, clients that injury law practices represent are confronted not only with the pain and suffering of their injury, but also with the anxiety of economic uncertainty and the fear of whether they can get treatment at the unusual facilities, such as a hospital or a local orthopedists office. They are also worried about getting their medical disability payments because so many peoples jobs have been disrupted.

As such, some current injury cases may also factor in additional pain and suffering caused by the Coronavirus crisis.

Clients are faced with a double whammy, Davis said. In addition to the pain and suffering of their injury, it is harder to access doctors who are available for non-coronavirus cases, and each time clients do get a treatment, they face the risk of getting infected. So, many injury victims suffer without treatment, and this is compounded by the anxiety of not knowing when life will return to some semblance of normalcy.

Financial insecurity, worries about the health of loved ones and being isolated can cause anxiety and depression. If you add to this mix the pain of back spasm, you have a condition that really requires psychological intervention. Our attorneys are now routinely questioning our existing clients as well as new ones about the compounded effects that the coronavirus crisis has heaped on their injury.

When Davis was asked whether he expects that there will be COVID-19 victims who want to sue medical centers for not providing testing or emergency care soon enough, he replied, We may get inquiries, but we have no plans to pursue them. Our plan is to be part of our communitys and our countrys recovery, not to finger point or second guess about what could have been done.

In the era of Coronavirus, a major challenge for personal injury litigation lawyers is the difficulty in safely getting their clients treatment for their traumatic injuries.

But, Davis is using an innovative solution to this dilemma. Instead of in-person medical care, he is working with a large cadre of doctors to implement telemedicine, i..e, diagnosis and treatment by videoconferencing. This delivers immediate care and it avoids putting patient, doctors and staff at increase risk of infection.

Davis recently related, I interviewed 20 physicians and psychologists, and 18 of them said that they were eager to use telemedicine to help their patients. We applaud these kinds of doctors!

Telemedicine is actually decades old. It has been primarily used to treat patients in rural areas and prisons.

In 2017, the State of New Jersey passed parity legislation which requires treaters, i.e., physicians, nurse practitioners and physical therapists, at rates that are comparable to in-office visits.

In telemedicine, the doctor utilizes a secured connection that allows him to see and examine the patient, take a medical history and conduct a physical examination.

This may sound implausible, because there is no physical touching of any body part. But protocols have been developed where a doctor can test a patients range of motion, note limitations and complaints of pain and observe spasms and then make a diagnosis with a high degree of accuracy. Based on these procedures, the doctor can also determine if the patient needs to have additional testing done, such as MRI and BNGs.

The literature reports that there is a high satisfaction rate for both the patients and doctors who use telemedicine.Patients spend a lot less time commuting, they avoid the pain of getting into and out of a car, and they dont have to wait in a doctors office, which may not even be a safe place nowadays.Most important, they have a lot of eye to eye contact with the doctor, as they would in an office visit.

Forward thinking healers are also implementing video conferencing for therapy. Doctors who examine injury clients usually prescribe a course of physical therapy, even before doing MRIs.

Teletheraphy can be accomplished with objects found in the home such as a chair, a piece of rope or can filled with food to help. These items can help a patient restore range of motion and strength.

To supplement that, some therapists will send their patients basic therapy equipment, like stretchable rubber sheets called therabands, that can help rehabilitate a patient before or after their surgery.

Davis states that therapy is critical to injured clients.

As attorneys, we are always concerned with our clients health and well being and the ability to get them full compensation for their injuries, he said. There is a heightened, often debilitating anxiety caused by the multiple stressors they now face during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this makes it even more important for them to keep up their physical therapy.

Whenever there has been a lapse in treatment, the insurance companies raise that defense, suggesting that the injury was not that serious or that it wasnt caused by the accident, Davis said. Telemedicine and tele-therapy with required medical documentation will prevent our clients from being taken advantage of.

So, even though jury trials are now suspended due to restrictions on social distancing, Davis, Saperstein, and Solomon , P.C., and other law firms will continue to settle cases with both judicial video teleconferences and mediations in front of judges, and they expect this that format will become the rule, not the exception.

With these new and evolving technologies that assist the legal as well as medical communities, Davis predicts that the cornarvirus crisis is rapidly ushering in a Golden Age of telemedicine and tele-therapy.

As more lawyers and judges appreciate the efficiency of legal video conferencing, it will become the norm in litigation practice, he said.

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Video Conferencing Increasingly Utilized in Law, Medicine, During COVID-19 Pandemic Pascack Press & Northern Valley Press - Pascack Press &...

UW Medicine opens drive-through coronavirus testing station for patients by appointment only – GeekWire

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Nurses wait for the next patient to be screened for coronavirus at a UW Medicine testing station. (UW Medicine Photo / Randy Carnell)

UW Medicine patients are getting checked for coronavirus at a drive-through station set up in a hospital clinics parking lot.

A similar station was created a couple of weeks ago inside a parking garage at UW Medical Center Northwest, to test employees of the University of Washingtons medical system. The by-appointment-only station was set up near the original site, at the hospitals outpatient clinic, and began serving high-risk patients on Monday.

We have already started to do testing in the hospital emergency department and some clinics. But there are a number of our patients who may not be appropriate for sending in to those environments, to minimize the risk of infection to themselves, and perhaps to others, Thomas Hei, director of outpatient services for UW Medical Center, explained in a UW video about the operation.

Patients can drive to a spot where they roll down the window and have nasal swab samples taken without getting out of the car. The process takes only a few minutes. Samples are then sent to the lab for processing, with results available within a couple of days.

The drive-through model was pioneered in South Korea and is being adapted by a growing number of medical networks and public health agencies.

During a White House briefing, Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, said 47 drive-through stations are due to be set up over the next few days in about a dozen states, as part of a public-private partnership facilitated by federal officials. Eventually, hundreds of stations could pop up around the nation.

Giroir said federal health workers conducted trial runs at a test site on Monday. We had a lot of kinks in the system, he admitted.

No such kinks were reported at UW Medicines site. Fifteen patients were served on the stations first day of operation, and Hei expects the pace to pick up.

I cant emphasize enough that this is not as if this is a retail drive-up, drive-through testing site, Hei said. We estimate that we should be able to test somewhere around 50 a day maybe more, depending on staffing and equipment.

Laurie Kuypers was one of several mask-wearing nurses who were taking samples. I work in the operating room, so Im kind of used to wearing a mask all day long, she said. But changing in and out of clothes this often is interesting, to say the least. I never imagined Id be out here doing this. But Im happy to do it, of course.

UW Medicine patients who are experiencing symptoms associated with COVID-19 for example, fever, a dry cough, sore throat and shortness of breath should call their physician or the UW Medicine Virtual Clinic to find out whether testing is needed. If the answer is yes, patients will be given an appointment for testing at the drive-through station or at an established UW Medicine clinic.

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UW Medicine opens drive-through coronavirus testing station for patients by appointment only - GeekWire

WVU Medicine to offer pre-screened patients drive-through specimen collection for COVID-19 – WVU Medicine

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Posted on 3/17/2020

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. WVU Medicine announced today that it is establishing five drive-through collection points in West Virginia to collect specimens from pre-screened patients to test for COVID-19. The collection points will be in Morgantown, Parkersburg, Bridgeport, Wheeling, and Martinsburg. Although there are still no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in West Virginia, transmission of the coronavirus is increasing nationwide, and other health systems have successfully used the drive-through approach.The testing itself will be supported by both Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, which will process the specimens that WVU Medicine collects from patients. The collection points will operate seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. starting tomorrow, March 18. Patients will typically learn test results in three-to-four days, although time will likely vary based on the volume of tests these two companies will be performing.Tests will be reserved for people who meet screening criteria based on CDC recommendations and are sick with symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Asymptomatic patients or those people who have no obvious COVID-19 symptoms will not be tested. This will ensure only the highest-risk patients are identified and receive the appropriate medical intervention. The screening will not test for seasonal flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), or any other respiratory illness.Patients who meet criteria for testing will be directed to one of the five drive-through collection points. WVU Medicine staff will collect the specimens, using appropriate precautions, and send them to Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp for analysis. This process reduces the need for other critically constrained resources.

We are happy to roll these collection sites out to our state and provide this critical service to our citizens, Judie Charlton, M.D., WVU Medicines chief medical officer, said. We only ask that people who are truly sick and who have symptoms consistent with COVID-19 request testing, which they can through their primary care doctor or by calling the WVU Medicine COVID-19 triage line at 304-598-6000, option 4.WVU Medicine will collect the specimen only if the patient has a valid Epic order from a referring physician.

Our process of requiring an Epic order expedites our ability to communicate results back to patients and ensure that appropriate measures have been taken in ordering the test, reporting to government agencies, and providing follow-through care when warranted, said Dr. Charlton. Patients whose care is through a provider without Epic access can be accommodated by the treating physician referring the patient to our Covid-19 triage number.

For more information on COVID-19, visit WVUMedicine.org/covid.

Link:

WVU Medicine to offer pre-screened patients drive-through specimen collection for COVID-19 - WVU Medicine

Mylan’s COVID-19 Medicine, And Other News: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Biopharma – Seeking Alpha

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Mylan Resurrects Old Malaria Medication to Fight COVID-19

Mylan (MYL) reported that it has decided to restart the production of hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets. The restart is to allow the use of these tablets as potential treatment of COVID-19. It is expected that the tablets will be available in the market by mid April. The tablet is currently approved to be used for treating malaria. Hydroxychloroquine is also approved to be used for treating some autoimmune diseases due to its anti-inflammatory properties and lower toxicity.

Mylan is currently looking to manufacture tablets in its West Virginia factory but may initiate such production outside of the United States as well. There had been a couple of studies which claimed that the tablet has the potential to treat COVID-19. The drug has been shortlisted by the World Health Organization as potential weapon to combat the coronavirus. However, Mylan is not the only firm to restart the production of hydroxychloroquine as Teva also announced its plan to donate over 6 million doses to US hospitals for meeting crucial demand.

As the world continues to be under threat from coronavirus, Mylan stands to gain substantial windfall should hydroxychloroquine proves its worth as a COVID-19 treatment. Currently, there is no approved treatment for this latest pandemic. However, given the severity of the situation, it is expected that the FDA will be taking swift measures for introducing treatments to the market.

Apart from focusing on fighting coronavirus, Mylan also recently reported its Biologics License Application for MYL 1402O which has been developed as a biosimilar to Avastin. The application has been reviewed under the 351(K) pathway and seeks approval for the drug candidate as first line and second treatment for patients suffering from metastatic colorectal cancer in combination with fluorouracil-based chemotherapy.

Mylan recently reported its fourth-quarter and full-year results. The company reported its total revenue for the year at $11.50 billion while its fourth-quarter revenue jumped 4 percent to touch $3.19 billion. Its adjusted EPS declined 3 percent to $4.42 and the companys adjusted free cash flow dipped 22 percent to $2.10 billion. The decline was mainly caused by investment in working capital on account new product launches. The company expects its FY 2020 revenue to be in the range of $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion while its adjusted EBITDA will likely be in the range of $3.2 billion to $3.9 billion.

Mylan is currently going through the process of merging with Upjohn, which is Pfizers (NYSE:PFE) off-patent branded and generic medicine business. The resulting entity will have 57 percent ownership of Pfizer shareholders whereas the remaining part will be held by Mylan shareholders. It was earlier reported that the new company will be called Viatris. The merger is expected to be completed by the mid of 2020. The portfolio of the Viatris will have a wide range of drugs and treatments including Celebrex, Viagra, Lipitor and EpiPen.

Mylan shows strong potential for its biosimilar business. The company has diverse biosimilar portfolio with robust development pipeline in place.

Lexicon Pharmaceuticals (LXRX) reported that it plans to shut down its two Zynquista studies due to paucity of funds. The drug candidate was being tested for its efficacy in treating heart failure, chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes. The two studies destined to be shut down are SOLOIST and SCORED. Lexicon stated that the decision has been taken after assessing the situation that a likely partnership intended to fund the studies is not likely to happen. The company also counted uncertainties caused by COVID-19 pandemic as one of the reasons.

Lexicon will provide further information about the trials during the announcement of its first-quarter results conference, scheduled to be held in May. The company stated that the decision was taken to preserve financial resources and to focus on other initiatives such as telotristat ethyl in biliary tract cancer and LX9211 in neuropathic pain. Lonnel Coats, president and chief executive officer of Lexicon, added, Pending review of the data, we expect that we will have accrued sufficient exposure data and cardiovascular events to satisfy all requirements for type 2 diabetes and, even with the early close-out, that these studies will contribute scientifically important data in the areas of cardiovascular and chronic kidney disease.

Zynquista has a long history behind it as Lexicon had earlier partnered with Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY) for developing and commercializing the drug. However, following an FDA rejection earlier in 2019, Sanofi ended the alliance later the year. The companies were working to develop the drug as an add on therapy to insulin injection for improving blood sugar control. Sanofi paid $260 million to Lexicon for ending the collaboration. Zynquista is a dual inhibitor of SGLT1 and SGLT2 and believed to reduce glucose absorption in the gastrointestinal tract and glucose reabsorption by the kidneys. It also believed to stimulate the release of GLP-1.

Celsion (CLSN) provided positive update about Phase 1/2 clinical trial OVATION 2. The company stated that all 15 patients in the trail showed successful resection of their tumors. 78 percent of the patients included in GEN 1 cohort showed an R0 resection, in comparison to only 50 percent of the patients included in the NACT only cohort showing the similar results. R0 resection denotes margin negative resection implying that no cancer cells were found at the outer edge of surrounding tissue. However, the overall response rate of nearly 80 percent was similar for both the groups.

Celsion stated that it plans to begin enrollment for Phase 2 in the second half of this year. It is expected that final progression free data will be available 12 months after the completion of enrollment. Nicholas Borys, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical officer of Celsion, said, "The combined data from our previous Phase Ib dose-escalating trial (OVATION 1 Study) plus this latest data from the Phase I portion of the OVATION 2 Study further confirms the encouraging dose-dependent efficacy of GEN-1 plus NACT. At the highest dosage, the drug showed an 82 percent R0 resection rate.

OVATION 2 has been designed to study the impact of IL-12 gene-mediated immunotherapy GEN-1, combined with standard-of-care neoadjuvant chemo (NACT), in patients with advanced or metastatic ovarian cancer. The patients are required to undergo interval debulking surgery and then three additional cycles of chemo following the NACT. Out of 15 patients included in the study, 9 were given immunotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy whereas remaining 6 were given neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone.

The initial safety data from the first 15 patients was studied by an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board, which concluded that no dose limiting toxicities were found in the 6 evaluable patients who received at least 4 weekly doses of GEN-1 at 100 mg/m2.

Thanks for reading. At the Total Pharma Tracker, we do more than follow biotech news. Using our IOMachine, our team of analysts work to be ahead of the curve.

That means that when the catalyst comes that will make or break a stock, weve positioned ourselves for success. And we share that positioning and all the analysis behind it with our members.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Mylan's COVID-19 Medicine, And Other News: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Biopharma - Seeking Alpha

Comedy: the best (coronavirus) medicine? – Duffy, Gunter believe there is a place for jokes amid the gloom – Jamaica Gleaner

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

There is an atmosphere of doom and gloom currently blanketing the globe as the coronavirus continues to spread. With entertainment and sporting events coming to a complete halt in many countries, quarantine and chill have become the new norm. As people adjust to the idea of staying in their homes for extended periods, its easy to see how things may become overwhelming for some. This is why some comedians feel that now is the time to keep people laughing. They believe that comic relief is necessary in these times and expressed ways the latter could be achieved without taking away from the seriousness of the pandemic.

Dufton Duffy Shepherd told The Sunday Gleaner that he is a firm believer in the phrase laughter is the best medicine. He explained that with all the sadness crippling the globe because of the virus, jokes are needed to balance the scales.

Persons need to understand that comedians are humans, and we are affected by the same situations that are affecting everybody else, but as a comedian, it is our responsibility to make this whole situation a little more palatable. Perhaps the way to survive all that is happening right now is to laugh at some of these issues, he said. And I want people to understand what Im saying. Im not saying we should make light of the issue because it is indeed serious but finding humour in the situation could help keep you sane. Laughing at things is not the same as taking it lightly.

Shepherd, whose comedy special, Slightly Unhinged, was postponed due to the virus outbreak, said he believes that jokes can even be used to educate the masses.

Sometimes the message is best communicated through laughter because its easier and more digestible. The same messages you want to get across about social distancing and hygiene, comedy can do that and in a way that connects with people because it made them smile. Everybody is so tense and so uptight right now that it (laughing) is the best thing to do. It will soothe the soul.

Internationally based comedian Rohan Gunter shared the same sentiments.

A little comic relief is always good, innu, whether the circumstances are bad or great. It gives people the opportunity to raise their vibes. If youre not in a fun mood right now while Corona is going around, comedy may be just the thing to lift your spirits, he said. This is the best time for comedy right now. When you have people going through stress, depression, paranoia, comedy is the best medicine. Its always good to have something light to consume when there is so much sadness and darkness.

Gunter, however, went on to explain that understanding time and place will be the thing that separates a good joke from one that is just plain insensitive.

The delivery of your joke is always important because people are dying from this thing, and you dont want to desensitise the issue. For example, if youre called to entertain some people at a hospital and some people just passed away because of corona, probably that wouldnt be the best audience for a straight corona joke. But there are topics coming off of corona that would be funny and appropriate. For example, you could talk about parents having to babysit the teachers children (which are their children) now because of school closures associated with the coronavirus, he said.

Shepherd agreed. There are elements of this that are already comedic because if yuh look at it, people run gone buy out all a di tissue, and fi wah? Does it make sense to buy out all a di tissue and nuh have no food? he aslked. As human beings, we just have to make sure that we arent making light of the situation. We have to bring the jokes across in a manner that is tasteful, and, as professionals, we know how to toe the line.

With that said, both professionals said that when situations normalise and bans on public gatherings are lifted, they are a hundred per cent certain coronavirus jokes will be woven into their sets.

Presently, I am putting some jokes together that are corona-related. As a comedian, you have to. Its a hot topic. It is at the top of the list of things you have to talk about. Theres no going around that, said Gunter.

Shepherd added: My show was postponed to a later date, and Im definitely sure that when it is held, corona is on my list. I will talk about how weve handled it, the attitude, and the entire experience. It has to be a topic, and Im looking forward to the after.

shereita.grizzle@gleanerjm.com

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Comedy: the best (coronavirus) medicine? - Duffy, Gunter believe there is a place for jokes amid the gloom - Jamaica Gleaner

When medicine loses the healing touch – The Hindu

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

In September 2016, the American Medical Association held a funeral service to physical examination. Medical imaging is gradually replacing the age-old conventional practice of history-taking and clinical examination. Our legendary and eminent gurus made bedside diagnosis just with history and physical examination (which includes percussion and auscultation), which was confirmed by minimal investigations available those days. Sometimes, even without investigations, their diagnosis was accurate.

With the burial of physical examination, patients need not be touched or examined and can be straightaway subjected to a battery of investigations suggested by algorithms. The physician thus loses the thought process and judgment and can bid farewell to the stethoscope as auscultation will be redundant. It wont be long before robots will replace the physician and take the history and feed it in the computer and print out the investigations required. The physician needs to give only the prescription.

Now, skin patches monitor real-time blood glucose levels, automatic blood pressure recorders display the readings on mobile phones and electronic loop recorders monitor heart rhythms round the clock through telemetry. Many scans are reported online from distant locations without examining the patient.

During practical examinations for trainees, it was customary for the examiners to ask for provisional diagnosis soon after the history. Again after physical examination, the examinee is assessed for his or her capability of arriving at a reasonable diagnosis. With the burial of physical examination, is it necessary for the trainees to be subjected to such a rigorous assessment? Training physicians to make diagnosis without physicals is like teaching algebra and calculus without teaching division and multiplication. Similarly, a musical exponent cannot achieve perfection without learning basic notes and ragas.

When physical examination becomes obsolete, there wont be any need to touch the patient. This will replace the age-old practice of doctor-patient relationship and it can be renamed a computer-patient relationship. Such a patient can be called an e-patient. This will defeat the concept of family physicians which still exists in our country. It is the touch of the physician which gives the healing effect to the patient, the so-called Hastavasi (the healing touch).

With the entombment of physical examination, is it necessary to increase the number of medical colleges and medical seats when the future is going to be dominated by computers and artificial intelligence? This aspect is debatable, and policy makers and health-care providers must give a serious thought to this.

I predict, however, that the buried physical examination will definitely have a resurrection.

isathya@hotmail.com

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CORONAVIRUS: Hubs will deliver food and medicine to vulnerable – Swindon Advertiser

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people to take the government's social distancing advice seriously as he introduced new measures to protect the most vulnerable.

The NHS identified 1.5 million people with serious underlying health conditions who are most at-risk of catching the coronavirus.

Letters will be sent advising that they stay home for 12 weeks.

Mr Johnson said: "This shielding will do more than any other single measure that we are setting out to save lives."

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that a network of local hubs set up around the country would deliver medicines and food to the most vulnerable and lonely people.

Nobody needs to worry about getting the food and essential items that they will need, he said.

These care packages will be left on the doorstep. Community pharmacies, supermarkets, councils and food distributors will work together to make this ambitious new service work.

The products will be free, with the Treasury footing the bill, and people will be able to order supplies over the phone and online. More details will be announced in the near future.

The announcement came as many people across the country continued to flout government advice to stay two metres apart from each other.

The prime minister resisted calls to impose a total lockdown and repeated government advice on social distancing.

Mr Johnson added: I want, of course I do, people to be able to go to the parks, open spaces and enjoy themselves.

"But even if you feel invulnerable, there are plenty of people you could infect.

"My message is you've got to do this in line with the advice, you've got to follow the social distancing rule - keep two metres apart. Take this advice seriously and it's absolutely crucial that you follow it.

"Otherwise if you don't do it responsibly... there is going to be no doubt that we will have to bring forward further measures and we are certainly keeping that under constant review.

"I would like to thank people who are already following the advice.

"The reason we're taking these unprecedented steps...is, of course, that we have to slow the spread of the disease and to save thousands of lives.

"The general principle should be we should all, as far as we possibly can, stay at home, protect our NHS and therefore save lives.

"The more we comply with this, the faster we will beat it."

Responding to questions on the dangers to elderly people leaving their homes, deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said that the public had a responsibility to make outside spaces safer by not congregating.

"There is a real balance point here - what we don't want to find is that we grow mental health problems or we grow other physical problems because of such a strict imposition.

"The virus doesn't last well outside for all sorts of reasons around temperature, UV light and everything else so actually an outdoor environment compared with an indoor one is generally a safer one - but the difficulty is if people are congregating outside or coming together."

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CORONAVIRUS: Hubs will deliver food and medicine to vulnerable - Swindon Advertiser

Covid-19: Crowdsourced virtual supercomputer revs up virus research – The Star Online

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

WASHINGTON: Gamers, bitcoin miners and companies large and small have teamed up for an unprecedented data-crunching effort that aims to harness idle computing power to accelerate research for a coronavirus treatment.

The project led by computational biologists has effectively created the world's most powerful supercomputer that can handle trillions of calculations needed to understand the structure of the virus.

More than 400,000 users downloaded the application in the past two weeks from Folding@Home, according to director Greg Bowman, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Washington University in St. Louis, where the project is based.

The distributed computing effort ties together thousands of devices to create a virtual supercomputer.

The project originally launched at Stanford University 20 years ago was designed to use crowdsourced computing power for simulations to better understand diseases, especially protein folding anomalies that can make pathogens deadly.

The simulations allow us to watch how every atom moves throughout time, Bowman told AFP.

The massive analysis looks for pockets or holes in the virus where a drug can be squeezed in.

Our primary objective is to hunt for binding sites for therapeutics, Bowman said.

Druggable targets

The powerful computing effort can test potential drug therapies, a technique known as computational drug design.

Bowman said he is optimistic about this effort because the team previously found a druggable target in the Ebola virus and because Covid-19 is structurally similar to the SARS virus which has been the subject of many studies.

The best opportunity for the near-term future is if we can find an existing drug that can bind to one of these sites, he said.

If that happens it could be used right away.

This is likely to include drugs like the antimalarials chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine which may be repurposed for Covid-19.

Bowman said the project has been able to boost its power to some 400 petaflops with each petaflop having a capacity to carry out one quadrillion calculations per second or three times more powerful than the world's top supercomputers.

Other supercomputers are also working in parallel. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory said earlier this month that by using IBM's most powerful supercomputer it had identified 77 potential compounds that could bind to the main spike protein of the coronavirus to disarm the pathogen.

No end to compute power

The Folding@Home project is fueled by crowdsourced computing power from people's desktops, laptops and even PlayStation consoles, as well as more powerful business computers and servers.

There is no end to the compute power than we can use in principle, Bowman said. Large tech firms including Microsoft-owned GitHub are also participating, and the project is in discussions with others.

Anyone with a relatively recent computer can contribute by installing a program which downloads a small amount of data for analysis.

People can choose which disease they wish to work on.

It's like bitcoin mining, but in the service of humanity, said Quentin Rhoads-Herrera of the security firm Critical Start, which has provided its powerful password hash cracker computer designed to decrypt passwords to the project.

Rhoads-Herrera said his team of security researchers, sometimes described as white hat hackers, were encouraging more people to get involved.

Fighting helplessness

Computer chipmaker Nvidia, which makes powerful graphics processors for gaming devices, called on gamers to join the effort as well.

The response has been record-breaking, with tens of thousands of new users joining, said Nvidia spokesman Hector Marinez.

One of the largest contributions comes from a Reddit group of PC enthusiasts and gamers which has some 24,000 members participating.

It is a fantastic weapon against the feeling of helplessness, said Pedro Valadas, a lawyer in Portugal who heads the Reddit community and is a part of the project's advisory board.

The fact that anyone, at home, with a computer, can play a role and help fight against (disease) for the common good is a powerful statement, Valadas told AFP. AFP

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Covid-19: Crowdsourced virtual supercomputer revs up virus research - The Star Online

IBM and White House to deploy supercomputer power to fight coronavirus outbreak – CNBC

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

President Donald Trump speaks, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence (L) and IBM CEO Virginia Marie 'Ginni' Rometty (R) during a roundtable discussion on vocational training with United States and German business leaders lead in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 17, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images

IBM is partnering with the White House to make a vast amount of supercomputing power available to help researchers stop the spreading coronavirus pandemic, according to the Trump administration.

The tech company has teamed up with theWhite House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy on the project in a "consortium effort," according to the Trump administration. The supercomputing power will be available to help researchers develop predictive models to analyze how the disease is progressing as well as model new potential therapies or a possible vaccine.

The consortium will review research proposals from around the world and make the supercomputing power available to projects that can have the most immediate impact. Technical assistance will be offered to researchers using it.

IBM's Summit supercomputer system is already helping the U.S. Department of Energyidentify drug compounds that could potentially disable the coronavirus.

Other partners in the new consortium includeNASA, MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the National Science Foundation.

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IBM and White House to deploy supercomputer power to fight coronavirus outbreak - CNBC

Covid-19: Chinese supercomputer uses artificial intelligence to diagnose patients from chest scans – The Star Online

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

A supercomputer in China offers doctors around the world free access to an artificial intelligence diagnostic tool for early identification of Covid-19 patients based on a chest scan.

The AI system on the Tianhe-1 computer can go through hundreds of images generated by computed tomography (CT) and gave a diagnosis in about 10 seconds, according to the National Supercomputer Centre in Tianjin, which hosts the machine.

An employee at the facility said the results could then be used to help medical professionals especially those in areas that have limited test kits or are hit by a sudden increase in suspected cases to quickly distinguish between patients infected with the novel coronavirus and those with common pneumonia or another illness.

The accuracy of the analysis was higher than 80% and increasing steadily every day, he said.

The system has an English interface and the reports it produces direct doctors to those areas of the patients lungs that require special attention by circling them in different colours.

It also provides an estimate of the likelihood of the person having contracted Covid-19, in a range from zero to 10, with lower numbers suggesting a higher probability of infection.

It even advises on what to do next, based on the experiences and lessons learned from doctors who have treated coronavirus patients.

Dr Xu Bo, a lead scientist on the project at Tianjin Medical University, said in an interview this week with Science and Technology Daily that the accuracy of the system was initially rather poor.

But the team worked round the clock to train the machine using the latest information from doctors with experience of Covid-19 and their clinical practices, he said.

As the number of samples increased, the AIs performance improved significantly, and is now helping medical teams fighting the coronavirus in more than 30 hospitals in Wuhan and other cities.

Xu said that it would take an experienced doctor about 15 minutes to go through the 300 images generated by a CT scan, while the AI did the job in about 10 seconds.

The system could be accessed via a computer or even a mobile phone, he said.

The use of chest scans for diagnosis was first proposed by doctors fighting the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan. After the city went into lockdown, a large number of suspected patients appeared and testing them for infection using genetic methods took from several hours to several days. Many people are thought to have died while waiting for their results to come back.

In a series of studies, including a paper published in medical journal The Lancet, Chinese doctors showed that CT scans were a reliable tool because the lungs of coronavirus patients had features unseen in other diseases.

The Chinese government accepted their advice and said scan results could be used as credentials for treatment. Many scientists have said that decision played an important role in controlling the outbreak in the country.

But not all countries agree with that methodology. The US Centres for Disease Control, for instance, does not currently recommend CXR or CT to diagnose Covid-19.

It said the reason was that using scans would attract more suspected cases to hospitals and in turn raise the likelihood of them infecting other patients and staff.

The American College of Radiology said: CT should not be used to screen for or as a first-line test to diagnose Covid-19.

After the device was used on a suspected patient, it could take an hour to clean the test room, the college said on Wednesday.

A doctor working at a Beijing hospital treating Covid-19 patients said the CT machine could scan hundreds of patients a day in China, but because of the different protocols in some Western countries, the number there fell to just one or two.

Governments should not let the CT sit idle during a major public health crisis, she said.

If you cant give the people a test, give them a scan. South China Morning Post

Covid-19: Chinese supercomputer uses artificial intelligence to diagnose patients from chest scans - The Star Online

IBM-built Supercomputer helps guide researchers to a cure for COVID-19 – BlackEngineer.com

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

In June 2018, the U.S. Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled the IBM-built Summit as the most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer. With a peak performance of 200,000 trillion calculations per secondor 200 petaflops, Summit is eight times more powerful than Oak Ridge National Laboratorys previous top-ranked system, Titan.

Since it debuted in 2018, Summit has driven groundbreaking research from helping to understand the origins of the universe, helping to understand the opioid crisis, and showing how humans would be able to land on Mars.

Recently, the energy department and IBM joined the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic with the supercomputer. According to Dave Turek, vice president of technical computing at IBM Cognitive Systems, Summit researchers were able to simulate a model that could impact the infection process by binding to the viruss spike.

They have also identified medications and natural compounds that have shown the potential to impair COVID-19s ability to dock with and infect host cells.

Summit was needed to rapidly get the simulation results we needed. It took us a day or two whereas it would have taken months on a normal computer, said Jeremy Smith, director of the University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center (ORNL) for Molecular Biophysics, and principal researcher in the study.

Our results dont mean that we have found a cure or treatment for COVID-19. We are very hopeful, though, that our computational findings will both inform future studies and provide a framework that experimentalists will use to further investigate these compounds. Only then will we know whether any of them exhibit the characteristics needed to mitigate this virus.

Turek said the hope is to see how Summit can continue to lend its weight in this latest pursuit. Click here to read more.

Viruses infect cells by binding to them and using a spike to inject their genetic material into the host cell. When trying to understand new biological compounds, like viruses, researchers in wet labs grow the micro-organism and see how it reacts in real-life to the introduction of new compounds, but this can be a slow process without computers that can perform digital simulations to narrow down the range of potential variables, but even then there are challenges.

Computer simulations can examine how different variables react with different viruses, but when each of these individual variables can be comprised of millions or even billions of unique pieces of data and compounded with the need to be run multiple simulations, this can quickly become a very time-intensive process using commodity hardware.

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IBM-built Supercomputer helps guide researchers to a cure for COVID-19 - BlackEngineer.com

UK vaccine trials to a supercomputer taking on virus top 5 developments on COVID-19 front – ThePrint

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

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New Delhi: As the COVID-19 pandemic expands and the disease progresses, the world has been witness to an overwhelming number of deaths taking place every day.

These include many health workers who have succumbed to the deadly virus, mainly due to lack of adequate protective gear.

Scientists across the world are in a race to find a treatment for coronavirus, including a supercomputer that has identified chemicals which can stop the virus from spreading.

ThePrint brings you the top developments taking place from around the globe.

Also read: Why a 3-year-old in Kerala being diagnosed with coronavirus is a crucial statistic

Compelled to work without adequate protective gear, 13 Italian doctors have died from coronavirus and at least 2,629 health workers are infected. Italy is one of the worlds hardest-hit countries by the coronavirus pandemic.

Infected health workers make up over 8.3 per cent of total cases in Italy.

The countrys healthcare system has been overwhelmed by coronavirus cases, compelling it to practice triage where doctors leave older patients, who are too sick, to die in order to conserve resources for those more likely to survive the infection.

The UK is all set to start human trials for a coronavirus vaccine next month, and fast-track efforts to make it available by the end of the year.

According to reports, researchers at Oxford University will test the UKs first coronavirus vaccine in animals next week at the Public Health England (PHE) laboratory.

If successful, it will be tested on humans.

The vaccine uses a harmless virus to insert DNA from the coronavirus into human body cells. Once inside, copies of the spike protein present in the coronavirus will be produced within the cells.

This will trigger the bodys natural immune response against coronavirus infection.

Researchers believe the vaccine will work with a single shot.

Also read: How countries worst hit by coronavirus are effecting lockdowns to deal with the pandemic

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine in the US have developed a simple SARS-CoV-2 antibody test that can be easily replicated in laboratories.

Describing their research in a preprint paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, the team has said that their test can reliably identify coronavirus antibodies in a persons blood serum.

Using this test to screen thousands of people can help understand how far the pandemic has travelled and how patients start to develop antibodies to the virus.

In the future, this test may also help identify people whose antibody-rich blood serum may help treat critically-ill patients.

The worlds fastest supercomputer has identified 77 chemical compounds that may effectively stop the novel coronavirus from infecting host cells.

IBMs supercomputer Summit, equipped with artificial intelligence, ran 8,000 simulations to analyse which drug compounds could bind to the spike protein of the coronavirus potentially stopping the virus from infecting host cells.

While this does not mean that a cure for the virus has been found, the supercomputer has narrowed down choices of drugs for researchers.

The study, published in the preprint journal ChemRxiv, could help researchers find a treatment for COVID-19

The Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Associations (REHVA) has published guidelines on how building services in areas with a coronavirus outbreak should operate to minimise the spread of the infection.

The body recommends buildings to switch on ventilation systems round the clock, or at least extend the operation of ventilation systems as much as possible.

Ventilation rates should be switched to low power when people are absent in order to remove virus particles out of the building.

Exhaust ventilation systems of toilets should be kept on 24/7.

In buildings without mechanical ventilation systems windows should be kept open for at least 15 minutes before somebody enters, especially if it was previously occupied by others.

However, such places should not keep windows in toilets open as it will encourage contaminated airflow from the toilet to other rooms.

Also read: Why fatigue will be the carrier of the second coronavirus wave

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UK vaccine trials to a supercomputer taking on virus top 5 developments on COVID-19 front - ThePrint

Coronavirus means the EU will never be the same again – Spectator.co.uk

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

The European project was built on the idea of rendering future war among European states impossible. The EU is programmed to avoid armed conflict among its member states, a situation that would blatantly undermine its very essence. But who could have predicted that an epidemic would shake its foundations. In the space of a couple of weeks fundamental tenets of the EU project have received a body blow and may not recover from the coronavirus epidemic.

The European Stability Pact requires member states to respect a three per cent budget deficit. France was about to breach that anyway and has used Covid-19 as a cover to go much further, as will Italy, Greece and others. The Pact also requires states national debt to go no higher than 60 per cent of GDP. Many of the northern states have respected that, whereas the southerners have not. Italy and France were already at 130 per cent and 100 per cent respectively before the epidemic, but with full lockdowns those figures will soar. On Friday,the EU bowed to the inevitable and lifted the budget cap, the first time ever. This will inevitably exaggerate the financial mismatch between the EUs north and south that was such a feature of the 2010/12 euro crisis. Of course, it can forcefully be claimed that the exceptional European pandemic requires exceptional measures. Rightly so. But rolling back that debt when the crisis is over will not be easy without stringent austerity measures as meted out to Greece in 2012/13.

Another of the EUs fundamental principles is control of state aid. Goodness knows what a shibboleth that has been in the Brexit negotiations. But expect states such as France, which has statism in its DNA, to go to town on re-nationalising swathes of its industry, beginning with Air France. That is fair enough in times of crisis, but getting those states to relinquish control in better times will be arduous.

The Schengen borderless EU has also been dealt a body blow. Frontiers have been restored across Europe by individual member states and the EU finally and reluctantly agreed to suspend Schengen only this week. Given that many EU states notably in central and eastern Europe have battled with the Commission in wishing to take control of their own borders since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, expect the return of Schengen to be a struggle for Brussels.

Ironically, freedom of movement, that totem of EU principles, has also ceased, not only between states but within certain states, albeit for sound medical reasons. What has irked many pro-Europeans, and Brussels itself, is that the response to Covid-19 has not been a standard EU-wide procedure. That is because health is not an EU competence. Thus different states have applied different measures to their populations to control the virus.

In broad terms, there are two models. The Italian model of full lock-down, since adopted by Spain then France and Belgium; the UK model of limited restrictions, but refusing general confinement, followed also by Holland and Sweden.

France, after initially rejecting the Italian method then enforcing it like a Jacobin Terror, is particularly upset at this lack of European harmony, as I wrote in The Spectator this week. Could a faint historical pattern be emerging in the choice of national method? Those societies that have traditionally emphasised the liberty of their citizens above equality are rejecting confinement. But suffice to say that the EU has been denied control of one of its founding principles.

A further example of the damage to the European project wrought by the epidemic is the break-down of European solidarity. Never a perfect concept in the first place, that solidarity under crisis is patently ceding to nation state reflexes. Italy, the first into the crisis and woefully lacking in surgical masks and ventilators, was pained by France and Germanys refusal to release some of their stocks.

Finally there is the overarching question of the EUs brittle financial solidarity, or its absence. In the international financial storm that has shaken markets and economies, the weaker individual European member states have until late this week been left to fend for themselvesas Ambrose Evans-Pritchard forcefully pointed out in theDaily Telegraph.Rather than rushing to provide the liquidity and guarantees in the name of monetary union, the European Central Bank dragged its feet, unlike the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England. Worse still, its new president recklessly announced last week at a moment of extreme vulnerability in the bond markets were not here to close spreads, with a detrimental impact on Italian debt. Only, finally, on Thursday did it assume its role as lender-of-last resort for its members. As with the 2008-09 financial crash the parsimonious nations, led by Germany, have been reluctant to bail out the spendthrifts. Now they may be forced into the unthinkable, for Germany at least: debt mutualisation.

What is certain is that some European political parties will be boosted electorally by Europes feebleness in the crisis. Both Matteo Salvini in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France excoriated Brussels weeks ago for refusing to lift the Schengen agreements to stop the virus spreading, according to them, out of pure EU ideology. The forced suspension of many of the EUs fundamental principles is a gift to them. Brussels will struggle to put the genie back in the bottle.

Where all this will leave the European project is a moot point. Debt mutualisation, postponed from 2008/9, is explosive and could make or break the EU. And yet, the history of EU integration is evidence that it thrives on crises as levers for ever-closer union. Frances foreign minister views the epidemic as an opportunity for Europe, failing which she will miss her appointment with history. In which case, president Macrons greater European integration reform programme may actually see the light of day and Europe move to the next level of ever-closer union.

Prof John Keiger is a specialist in French history and the former Research Director in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge

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Coronavirus means the EU will never be the same again - Spectator.co.uk

A Closed Border, Dashed Hopes and a Looming Disaster – The New York Times

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

CIUDAD JUREZ, Mexico Tania Bonilla arrived in this Mexican border city on Wednesday determined to apply for asylum in the United States.

With her 1-year-old in tow, she had defied the odds evading a death sentence by a Honduran gang at home, she said, as well as deportation by the Mexican authorities at the southern border and kidnapping by smugglers en route.

But now, in eyeshot of an international bridge connecting the Mexican city of Ciudad Jurez to the United States, a new and even more serious obstacle presented itself: the coronavirus.

In response to its rapid spread, which has claimed about 13,000 lives worldwide, the United States government announced on Friday that in addition to closing the Mexican border to nonessential traffic, it would shut off access for anyone trying to claim asylum from the border.

In practice, the United States will deport anyone caught crossing between official ports of entry, including those hoping to turn themselves in, denying them access to asylum and potentially sending them back into harms way.

Mexico has not only agreed to accept Mexicans returned under this policy. Its government acknowledged on Saturday that it would take back most Central Americans as well, potentially adding thousands more to the migrant populations already swelling along the border.

The Trump administration decision will also put an end, at least for now, to the hopes of asylum seekers who want to legally enter the United States at official border crossings. That includes thousands who have been waiting, some for months, for the chance to present themselves.

Analysts said this was the first time in memory since the creation of the current asylum system 40 years ago that the United States had shut down access to its program along the border a sign of the deep-seated fear that has prompted the president to close both the northern and southern borders to nonessential traffic.

But others viewed it as an attempt to use a global pandemic as a pretext to summarily block access to the U.S. asylum system for those coming from the south.

I think when you have a crisis of these proportions, its possible to get away with a lot, and thats possibly what they are doing here, said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

For some migrants, the move felt existential, as though what little hope remained had been plundered by a virus that is far more widespread in the United States than in their own countries.

Right now, I dont know what Im going to do, said Ms. Bonilla, 22, seated on a cinder block outside the state of Chihuahuas migrant affairs offices. Her son played with another group of children whose parents were also fleeing violence. The one thing I cant do is go back.

Equally worrisome are the implications of such a move along the border, particularly in terms of health care, with communities of asylum seekers already writhing under the weight of overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions.

On Saturday, the Mexican government was encouraging migrants to leave a large encampment in the border city of Matamoros, where some 2,000 have been living in tents on a muddy strip of land next to the international bridge.

At least 150 migrants boarded buses at the camp on Saturday and were taken away, though it was unclear whether that was related to the coronavirus. From time to time in recent months, the federal government has provided bus service to migrants seeking to leave northern Mexico and return to Central America.

Mexican officials said the buses on Saturday were provided by the government in response to requests from migrants living at the camp.

Fridays decision by the Trump administration to wall off the border from potential infections seems, for the moment, to fly in the face of transmission patterns.

Helen Perry, executive director of Global Response Management, a nonprofit that runs a clinic at the migrant encampment in Matamoros, said there had been no transmissions of the virus among the migrant population so far, and none of those residing in the camp appeared to show symptoms.

Similarly, in Tijuana and Ciudad Jurez, medical professionals reported no suspected cases.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases in the United States dwarfs those in every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, combined.

Experts say the most likely scenario is that someone coming from the United States will bring the virus into migrant communities living south of the border, sowing devastation among already vulnerable populations.

The migrants havent passed through major cities, airports or been hanging out at cafes, said Mrs. Perry.

What is certain, however, is that the bulk of the new policys burden will be felt on the Mexican side of the border, where shelters are bracing for the new reality.

At a meeting this week in Ciudad Jurez, shelter operators met to discuss group strategies to protect their populations from the virus. Increased use of hand sanitizer, face masks and screening were among the most obvious.

At the Casa del Migrante in Ciudad Jurez, the largest and longest-running shelter in the city, new arrivals will be housed in a separate facility for at least two weeks. But even they cant follow all best practices.

They suggest we put one meter of spacing between the beds, said Blanca Rivera, an administrator there. But we dont have that kind of space.

Sister Adelia Contini, the director of the Madre Asunta Institute shelter in Tijuana, said she was caring for 70 migrants in a center with only 45 beds.

Were not going to receive more people, she said by telephone.

Father Julio Lpez, who runs the Casa del Migrante Nazareth shelter in the city of Nuevo Laredo, said his center lacked basic safety equipment.

We dont have anything, he said.

Dirvin Luis Garca, the deputy director of the Chihuahua population council, which oversees migrant issues for the state, was more blunt still: We are not prepared for this scenario.

In the Matamoros camp, migrants bathe and wash their clothes in the Rio Grande.

Families of four or five occupy tents intended for two people; some are already weakened by respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments.

The crowded conditions, lack of hygiene and dearth of medical supplies practically guarantee that when the virus strikes, it will spread quickly and brutally.

We are preparing the community for what will inevitably happen, said Andrea Leiner, a nurse practitioner who is director of strategic planning for Global Response.

To prepare, the organization has begun distributing vitamin D and zinc in an attempt to boost migrants immune systems.

They are being told to position their tents at least six feet apart, and to open ventilation flaps to let in fresh air.

While many blame the United States for the already difficult conditions along the border, it is not solely responsible for the overcrowding.

Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, has taken heat for bending to the will of the United States in ways once unthinkable for a leftist leader, especially one who had vowed to protect migrant rights.

His public assent has helped push shelters beyond capacity, taxed local and state governments, exhausted the resources of charitable groups and strained the good will of residents.

Yet the president has hardly paid a political cost.

His approval ratings remain high among Mexicans, who seem to have given little thought to his migration policy. His administration has been clear that its policy is to maintain good relations with the Trump administration.

For Ms. Bonilla, that policy is a crushing counterpoint to the hope that brought her hundreds of miles north in search of a better life.

Even last October, when thousands of migrants were being sent back to Mexico, her partner had managed to make it across with their daughter. He was living and working in Florida.

She hadnt planned to join him so soon, but in February, she said, Honduran gang members began extorting her. She had started a small business selling coffee, and they wanted her to pay them $400, a relative fortune.

She refused and filed a complaint with the police. Five days later, after the gang found out, they threatened to kill her son in front of her.

An hour later, she fled with her son, carrying their documents, her meager savings and a cellphone. Since then, she has been denied asylum in Mexico, deported and then robbed when she finally did make it to Ciudad Jurez.

In less than a week, she had come to understand the migrants burden: persistence in the face of cruel setbacks and total uncertainty. That felt truer than ever now, as she waited for the new policy to go into effect.

Weve suffered so much on the road, trying to get to this point, to ask for asylum, she said, clutching her son as he tried to wriggle free. To be met with this news, its just devastating.

Right now, I dont know what Im going to do, she added. Like I said, I cant go back. Thats the only thing I cant do.

Caitlin Dickerson contributed reporting from New York.

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A Closed Border, Dashed Hopes and a Looming Disaster - The New York Times

Migrant camps on Mexican border are scrambling to avert mass infection from coronavirus – Yahoo Finance

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

Self-isolating isnt straightforward at the encampment in Matamoros, a Mexican border city home to about 2,500 people living in tents, waiting on US asylum and immigration claims.

There are no confirmed novel coronavirus cases in the camp, but humanitarian organizations are working around the clock to prepare for the devastating effect the virus could have if someone does become infected, said Andrea Leiner, director of strategic plans at Matamoros for Global Response Management (GRM), a medical nonprofit. If Covid does come to our camp, the environment is ripe for mass infection and severe illness, she said.

The camps inhabitants, who mostly traveled from Central America in the infamous migrant caravans, now live on a dusty former soccer pitch right next to the Rio Grande. It looks like a little village from hundreds of years ago, when you didnt have running water, you didnt have electricity, you didnt have the basic amenities we think of as being critical or needed in everyday life, said Andrea Rudnik, co-founder of Team Brownsville, a nonprofit providing aid from the US side of the border. Its extremely dusty. When you get onto the river levees, you get hit with waves of dust and dirt in your faceand thats constant.

Mexican media have reported a possible case in the town of Matamoros and a confirmed case in Reynosa, another border town with a large encampment. While US president Donald Trump announced this week he planned to close the border with Mexico, immigration hearings have so far been ongoing. That means migrants living in the camps have been crossing back and forth across the border to attend hearings. Its possible that after their court appointments people could have brought the virus back from the US, where there are far more confirmed cases than in Mexico, said Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and Migrant Rights at WOLA, a nonprofit focused on human rights in the Americas. It could quickly become a real crisis on the border, she said.

Like the US government, critics have accused the Mexican government of initially taking a laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus crisis in general. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador spent last weekend, for example, defiantly hugging and kissing supporters. In Matamoros, authorities at first said the crisis wasnt a big deal and mooted measures like displacing those hit by the virus to a different site, Leiner said. But they have since softened their approach and signed off on humanitarian organizations plans, while the head of the local health department has been in constant contact, she said.

But concerns remain that policy could quickly change. As cases start coming up, one thing we were worried about is if we announce any suspected cases or if we notify the authorities, could that then trigger a border closure? Or violence against the camp? Or someone being detained and never seeing their family again? Leiner asked. If were further hampered by border closures or supply lines or medical personnel not being able to cross, that makes the fight ahead of us even more difficult.

Most asylum seekers on the border are young, but their high levels of stress and poor living conditions mean the virus could take a heavy toll on them, said Oscar Misael, an anthropologist at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research institute studying the border area. Were talking about a population that is obviously at risk because they were already exposed to conditions of vulnerabilitywhether social, legal, or in terms of healthcare, he said.

When Misael surveyed migrants in Reynosa and Matamoros last year, around a third said they had experienced health issues during their journeymany of which were acute respiratory infections. Leiner said most people there are malnourished and nutrient deficient.

GRM has been giving them multivitamins to boost their immune systemsone of three prongs in the strategy to tackle the virus. They have put in place whatever prevention methods are possible, such as moving tents further apart, improving ventilation, and setting up a medical hotline.

People with mild to moderate symptoms will shelter in their tents, while those severely hit will be sent to the local hospital. Once that fills up, GRM will begin treating people in a rudimentary field hospital that can take up to 20 patients. Its in the middle of a muddy field where theres no electricity and no running water, Leiner said. Were clearly not able to provide medical grade oxygen at the quantity where we can ventilate peoplethats just not possible.

Europeans Erect Borders Against Coronavirus, but the Enemy Is Already Within – The Indian Express

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

By: New York Times | Brussels | Published: March 16, 2020 1:57:23 pm Sparse crowds at Alexanderplatz, a large public square with shopping, on Sunday afternoon in Berlin, March 15, 2020. In societies where life plays out on the street or in the cafe, where friends are greeted with kisses on the cheeks, the outbreak is creating fear and fragmentation. (Emile Ducke/The New York Times)

The gilded museum of Europe is hollow and echoing. The great squares and stadiums are empty, the museums shut, the churches hesitant about services, the fine restaurants and cool bars shuttered.

The coronavirus is not only spreading but also infecting societies with a sense of insecurity, fear and fragmentation. Above all, it has severed humanity from its conceit of control and of the invincibility of its institutions, science, technology and democracies.

If that is true nearly everywhere the virus goes, it is all the more so in Europe, with its history of Enlightenment, where life is lived, ordinarily, on an intimate scale, bumping shoulders on the street or in the cafe, greeting friends with kisses on the cheeks.

No more. Today, Europeans are told to hide away, erecting borders between countries, inside their cities and neighborhoods, around their homes to protect themselves from their neighbors, even from their grandchildren.

Read| As Europe shuts down, Britain takes a different, and contentious, approach

Confronting a virus that respects no borders, this modern Europe without borders is building them everywhere. But different states have different answers, and each discrete and disparate step has increased the sense of the coming apart, and the feeling that the problem is someone elses creation.

The paradox of a virus that knows no borders is that the solution requires borders, not just between countries but within them, said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to the European Union. But putting them up in an uncoordinated way doesnt help.

Putting them up at all, in fact, may not make much difference. The invisible threat is already within.

Even so, there is inevitably a turn back to the state for expertise, control and reassurance. As the pandemic spreads from Italy to Spain, France, Germany and beyond, there is a growing sense of the need for harsh, even authoritarian methods, many of them taken from China.

After watching the epidemic in China with extraordinary indifference, Europe has been terrified by Italy. Suddenly, many of the continents countries are trying to lock down, to protect themselves and their citizens. The idea of European solidarity, and of a borderless Europe where citizens are free to travel and work, seems very far away.

Read| Explained: COVID-19 travel restrictions around the world

If the pandemic has the logic of war, requiring strong action, the enemy may be the person standing next to you.

Its not anymore a question of borders between states but between individuals, said Ivan Krastev, who directs the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna.

It is now the individual you fear, Krastev said. Everyone around you may be a danger, carrying the virus. The person may not know hes a danger to you, and the only one who isnt a danger is the one you never meet, the one who stays at home.

The welcoming kiss, la bise, is suddenly dangerous, as is the hug of happiness or condolence.

Krastev has written tellingly about Europes migration crisis, calling it as big a shock as the fall of Communism. But now no one is talking of opening borders, he said.

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Now its not migrants you fear, but everyone, Krastev said.

The narrative of the migrant crisis included metaphors of hordes, invasion and even insects, and claims that migrants were bringing disease. They wanted to come from their wretched lives to a Europe that they considered safe and rich. But it is no longer safe.

Now, migrants will wonder, Is the plague worse than the war? Krastev said. You cannot negotiate with the plague or flee it.

A decade ago, Dominique Mosi, a French political scientist married to an Italian, wrote a book called The Geopolitics of Emotion, explaining the strains caused by globalization in terms of humiliation, hope and fear. Today, he said, the dominating emotion is fear.

The crisis of COVID-19 is adding uncertainty to uncertainty, fear upon fear, accelerating a process of anxiety about a world that is moving too fast, Mosi said, referring to the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

With terrorism, economic panic, strategic uncertainty, climate change and migration, he said, the fundamentals seem uncertain and the future unknowable.

Now comes an enemy unseen.

You can put your hand on a door handle and get the virus thats the maximum of fear, he said.

He misses touching and kissing his grandchildren, he said, and begins to think of death.

Yet mobilization of society is even more difficult and necessary because the enemy is invisible, he said. Paris has lived through terrorism and saw 150 killed in one night in 2015, he noted.

It was brutal but visible, he said, whereas in the end, the number of dead from the virus will be much more numerous, but its invisible, and weve never lived through that.

So it is difficult for governments who learned to urge calm on their populations in times of terrorism to now learn how to frighten them into acting for the common good.

During the great Black Death of the 14th century, which took so many lives, people believed that God had condemned those who died and chose whom to spare. But in a secular society, its harder to find the morality in who is dying, Krastev said. Instead you have all these conspiracy theories, with talk of the foreign virus and even a Chinese spokesman suggesting that the U.S. military was to blame.

In 2003, George Steiner, the European philosopher who died last month at 90, wrote a famous essay for the Nexus Institute called The Idea of Europe. But that idea is under threat.

Europes cultural identity, Steiner wrote, is founded on several characteristics largely missing in the United States, where car culture, suburban sprawl and great open spaces engender a sense of separateness.

In Europe, it is a culture of coffee houses and cafes, where people meet, read, write and plot. They are places, Steiner said, for assignation and conspiracy, for intellectual debate and gossip, for the flneur and the poet or metaphysician at his notebook, open to all.

Europes is also a pedestrian culture, founded on squares and small streets, usually named after scholars and statesmen, famous for their works and their massacres. Europe is walked, he wrote, and distances are on a human scale.

Read| Explained: Coronavirus testing in India, elsewhere

In this plague time, with cafes closed and squares empty of residents and tourists, both of those characteristics are destroyed, leading to isolation and loneliness, Krastev said.

But perhaps most important, Steiner wrote, is the European sense of death and decay, which he called an eschatological self-awareness which, I believe, may well be unique to European consciousness.

Deep in Christianity and European philosophy was a more or less tragic finality, he wrote, adding: It is as if Europe, unlike other civilizations, had intuited that it would one day collapse under the paradoxical weight of its achievements and the unparalleled wealth and complication of its history.

These are hardly the end of days, but the mood is grim. Still, it is sometimes broken by surprising acts of common humanity and solidarity, Tocci noted.

An Italian, she is staying at home in Rome with her husband and children, filling out a police form when she ventures out into the street, even to go to the grocery store, and trying to concentrate on the nicer aspects of quarantine.

You rediscover some small things, spending time with the children and the family, keeping up with her father by Skype, noting that for once, social media is proving to be more beneficial than meretricious.

Italians have been singing together from their segregated balconies and displaying a united appreciation for their exhausted medical workers, she noted.

Whats beautiful about it, so far, is that it hasnt led to alienation, Tocci said. People are afraid but mostly showing responsibility and solidarity. There are so many messages going around, some of them full of hilarity and a shared community.

Even on my dreary and empty Brussels street, someone has hung an Italian flag from an apartment window. And there are still, in the grocery stores, where people move silently and carefully around one another, moments of shared emotion. A woman with a full shopping cart was trying to balance a package of toilet paper and dropped her phone. I picked it up and gave it to her, then thought how foolish I had been, but she thanked me and smiled ruefully, understanding the ambivalence.

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Europeans Erect Borders Against Coronavirus, but the Enemy Is Already Within - The Indian Express

Conversations From Calais: the powerful design project giving a voice to refugees – The National

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

You said you were going back to Syria, reads a poster pasted on a wall on a street in London. I asked you if it was safe there. You answered you didnt care, at least if you died there, it would be with dignity and in your own country, instead of dying here, like an animal.

This heartbreaking extract is from a conversation between a refugee stranded in France and a volunteer aid worker. It is one of about 100 emotional snippets printed on to posters and put up throughout more than 50 cities across five continents and in several languages, as part of a project called Conversations From Calais.

On another poster, the words read: You asked me if I had seen those photos of white people coming to Sudan. You said the white people always looked so happy, smiling with the locals. You said they always felt welcomed in your country, because they were treated as guests in your home. So you asked me why you didnt deserve the same treatment in Europe. I didnt know what to answer.

Mathilda Della Torre, 23, who is studying for a masters degree in graphic communication design in London, launched the project at the end of last year. Through it, she says she hopes to re-humanise the refugee crisis, highlighting the struggles and hardships faced by so many people fleeing their home countries in search of safety and security in Europe.

Two years ago, I decided to go to Calais Refugee Camp with my mum to volunteer after wed attended a pop-up shop run by Help Refugees where you could buy items like notebooks, food or clothes for migrants, Della Torre tells The National. I was so shocked this was happening and that I hadnt been aware of it. I thought everything had ended. I felt embarrassed and naive to be French and not know about this.

Last month, 220 migrants were rescued in the English Channel in the space of 48 hours. Last year, 2,758 boats attempted to cross the Channel illegally a five-fold increase compared to 2018, during which 568 tried to cross. The camp Della Torre visited, which is also known as the Calais Jungle, hosted almost 10,000 refugees at its peak and was cleared by French authorities in October 2016, with about 6,000 people moved. At the time, Frances interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the country would create accommodation for thousands elsewhere in a bid to unblock Calais.

Soon after, amid failed asylum applications and mounting racism, migrants began gathering in the area again in the hope of making a successful attempt to cross the Channel, eventually forming several smaller camps that are regularly cleared. The French police arrive early in the morning and take away a lot of their belongings, Della Torre explains. The refugees are forced into this cycle of constantly having to find a new place and this is what is so physically and mentally exhausting and damaging.

The evictions are an attempt by authorities to prevent migrants from reaching the UK illegally. In November, Michel Cadot, the head of Pariss police force, said there would now be a permanent police presence deployed in order to stop these camps reforming. He said the evacuations were a bid from the state to take back the public space. The UK-France Co-ordination and Information Centre in Calais which opened in 2018 and is operated by British Home Office border officials, National Crime Agency officers and British immigration enforcement staff backs the strategy. Before the centre opened, UK home secretary at the time, Sajid Javid, said it would allow the UK and France to work even closer in the fight to tackle illegal activity at the border and the crime networks who are putting the lives of vulnerable people at risk.

Della Torre has a different take on the matter, arguing these evictions put even more vulnerable people at risk. Now people are staying under bridges and next to the highway, she says. The evictions are more and more frequent but the number of people is not decreasing. These people are totally dependent on humanitarian organisations. This is what inspired her to begin writing down conversations she had with people stranded in Calais, which led to the idea of creating the posters.

This project is a way of bearing witness, re-humanising the migrant crisis, sharing stories and documenting whats happening

-Mathilda Della Torre

Della Torre recalls a particularly striking conversation she had while volunteering with Help Refugees to distribute clothes. A refugee asked for a specific colour of jumper, but it was no longer available. He said to me but you dont understand, I havent been able to make a choice about my food or my clothes for the past 18 months. I dont have choice in anything I do. I was sent by one smuggler to another, who decided where I was going, and then its charities deciding when Im going to eat, what Im going to eat and where Im going to eat.

After that exchange, Della Torre says she noticed negative coverage in the media about refugees attempting to cross the Channel, as well as an overall lack of media coverage about the situation in Calais. This spurred her decision to travel to Dover, which has a major port for ferries to Calais. She pasted the first 50 posters all across the English town.

An article last autumn portrayed the arrival of migrant boats on the coast of England as an invasion that the country had to strengthen its borders, she says. So I travelled to Dover and put these conversations up using wheat pasting [a liquid adhesive created using wheat flour or starch mixed with water] it is an easy way to gain control of public spaces.

After that she created an Instagram account called Conversations From Calais and in January she launched its website. It allows people from across the world to submit excerpts of their own conversations with refugees, as well as being able to download posters to display where they live.

Another poster reads: You told me you were stuck in the sea for eight hours with your wife and five kids. The boat broke down. It was dark and the kids were crying. I saw the darkness in your eyes as you said you saw death in those waters.

Josh Man-Saif, the community and networks manager for Help Refugees, says Europe should be ashamed of the lack of protection for child refugees who are travelling alone. Two hundred unaccompanied minors are living just 20 miles away from Kent, he says. Under the Dublin Regulation, these children have the legal right to be reunited with family, he says. But with Britain leaving the EU, it means the future of this regulation is uncertain.

The Dubs amendment to the Brexit bill, which would have protected unaccompanied child refugees in Europe without family by transferring them to the safety of the UK, was overturned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Conservative MPs in January. Ministers argued the Brexit bill was not the appropriate place to deal with the issue.

Primary legislation cannot deliver the best outcomes for these children as it cannot guarantee that we reach an agreement, UK Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Parliament at the time. That is why this is ultimately a matter which must be negotiated with the EU and the government is committed to seeking the best possible outcome in those negotiations.

But Man-Saif says this leaves no mechanism to protect these lost children. The only option for many unaccompanied minors is to use traffickers or try to take other dangerous routes. It means one more lifeline is gone and these children will be forced to take more risks, he says. It means chasing lorries, potentially getting on to a boat in a storm, sleeping outside for months with strangers you dont speak the same language as. So many children disappear.

Since 2016, the spaces available for refugees to camp in have become smaller, he says. They were in the woods and then wastelands in industrial zones, but month by month police and private companies have fenced them off. Now most people are sleeping on the pavement at the side of the road.

Last month, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released a statement condemning the failure of the French authorities to protect migrant children, specifically those who are unaccompanied. Corinne Torre heads MSFs mission for France and says that with the vast majority of asylum applications from unaccompanied children being rejected, the organisation took the decision to open a day centre in Paris that offers legal support, medical care and a safe, social environment for those aged under 18.

A year after wed opened the centre in 2017, 57 per cent of the unaccompanied minors wed provided legal assistance for were recognised as minors, which shows that evaluations by the French authorities were not done properly, Torre says.

She stresses mental health is a major problem among refugee children and that many of the minors MSF deal with have been kidnapped, tortured or suffered sexual violence, in their home country and during their journey into Europe. We do mobile clinics every week in the north, she says. We can testify that the situation is really bad. It is becoming increasingly complicated because now we have more unofficial camps around France. This includes families with kids, which is unacceptable

. We have more and more vulnerable people. European policies are not working. Everyones protecting their own borders.

It is for these reasons that Della Torre says she feels the work shes doing through Conversations From Calais, no matter how small, is important. Its about giving a voice to migrants, she says. These people feel as though they are being ignored by governments. This project is a way of bearing witness, re-humanising the migrant crisis, sharing stories and documenting whats happening.

Its been a success so far. The project gained momentum after Januarys Refugee Solidarity Summit in Deptford, where her posters were exhibited. A selection of images of the exhibition taken by a visitor garnered almost 12,000 shares online. Its been a bit overwhelming but Ive seen the positive side of social media, Della Torre adds. Seeing there is a need for this project has motivated me to keep going. People still need to be talking about this issue.

Updated: March 22, 2020 08:32 AM

Originally posted here:

Conversations From Calais: the powerful design project giving a voice to refugees - The National

The week in foreign policy – BFPG

Posted on March 22, 2020 by Danzig

This week in foreign policy, and domestic affairs, has been one like no other, with countries across the world introducing unprecedented measures to contain the spread of Covid-19. With news outlets saturated with stories and information relating to the coronavirus, we will continue to bring you foreign policy pieces you might have missed as world activity continues.

Although relegated to a video-conference, EU leaders met this week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the migrants crisis and the humanitarian situation in Idlib, Syria. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the UKs Prime Minister Boris Johnson attempted to negotiate a resolution to the migrant crisis with Erdogan, as well as coordinate a humanitarian response to the situation in Idlib. Further details available on Euractiv.

Following the courts decision to declare a planned third runway at Heathrow unlawful, the proposed expansion has now been declared to be in a deep freeze, reports CityAM. Stefan Boscia writes that the aviation industrys crisis, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, will likely delay a government decision on the expansion of one of the UKs busiest and most international airports.

Over in the US, the Democratic Primary rumbles on, albeit with a reduction of live debates. Michael OHanlon examines for The Hill how different foreign policy would be under either of the frontrunners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Whilst the candidates appear radically different, OHanlon suggests that upon examining their actions and proposals, their ideas could be reconciled. Many of Sanders specific proposals, for example, rooted in international cooperation, and the fight against climate change, inequality and authoritarianism, are much more mainstream than his favorable comments about Fidel Castro back in the day might suggest, creating overlap with the more centrist Biden.

The coronavirus has piled the pressure on the global economy, and for Iran a nation subject to tough international sanctions and hit particularly hard by Covid-19 the outlook is bleak. Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic Editor at The Guardian, reports that the UK has been pressuring the US behind the scenes to ease sanctions on Iran in order to help it fight the coronavirus outbreak. As 17,361 people in Iran have been infected with the virus, the Iranian embassy in London has appealed for sanctions to be lifted. The World Health Organization has suggested that the Iranian health ministry figures have underestimated the true numbers of those affected by the coronavirus by a fifth, meaning that the strain on the country is even greater.

Whilst the UKs transition period for leaving the EU is still due to expire at the end of this year, the Telegraph suggests that the UK is preparing to seek an extension to this transition period as both the UK and the EU are focused on the coronavirus crisis. The EUs chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has been confirmed to have the virus, and his British counterpart, David Frost, is reportedly self-isolating with symptoms, adding further credence to the idea that an extension will be sought before the June deadline expires.

The British Foreign Policy Group is an independent, non-partisan think tank based in London. Through dynamic research, events and networks, we seek to strengthen the UKs international engagement, and advance our understanding of global affairs in the 21st Century.

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The week in foreign policy - BFPG

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