Medical assistant Debbie Turrise assists drive-thru patients with self administered COVID-19 tests at a testing site at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020. University of Chicago Medicine will soon begin testing another potential COVID-19 vaccine, and is looking for up to 2,000 people to enroll in the phase three clinical trial. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
CORNING, NY (WETM) While the coronavirus continues to infect people around the globe, scientists are working to develop a vaccine, including a research team in Corning, NY.
The Corning Center for Clinical Research, an affiliate of Smith Allergy & Asthma Specialists of Central New York, enters the third of four phases in a trail to develop the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021.
The expected date for the vaccine cannot be revealed at this time due to confidentiality agreements with a nationally recognized pharmaceutical company, according to Dr. Christopher Smith Board-certified Allergy and Immunologist,
Smith says that he knows of other studies that are entering the third phase of their trail as early as this year.
Smith had 24-years of experience working on clinical research and has worked with all of the major pharmaceutical companies on a national and international scale.
I feel like this is the Super Bowl in terms of research, said Smith. Not that stuff that weve done previously didnt count, but this has such a relevance and importance to whats going on right now, its a different level.
Paul Pettit, public health director for Genesee and Orleans counties, is determined to look beyond the rumors and posturing to make sure his department is ready when federal and state governments roll out the first phase of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Theres a lot of chatter out there locally, well have our plan ready, Pettit said on Monday afternoon as he advised the Genesee County Legislatures Human Services Committee of the importance of three resolutions pertaining to the health departments readiness to administer a vaccine.
The first resolution renews the countys agreement with Genesee Community College to use the campus at no charge -- as a Point of Dispensing Clinic during an emergency for the period of Jan. 1, 2021 through Dec. 31, 2023.
Pettit said GCC (possibly the new athletic facility) is an ideal site for distributing the vaccine, which he said likely will be made available in phases first to elder care facilities such as nursing homes and then to healthier adults and children.
He mentioned that there could be up to 30 million doses by the end of the year, but didnt know how many the county would get, speculating maybe 50 to 100 doses of the initial outlay. He noted that as the number of public vaccinations increase, private providers and pharmacies would be enlisted to support the health departments efforts.
For smaller clinics, Pettit said the county already has the use of the fairgrounds and County Building II.
Pettit also responded to Legislator John Deleos comments about New York State wanting to review any federallyapproved vaccine before allowing it to be dispensed to its residents and about talk that the proposed vaccines are not sufficient for minorities.
Thats when he said he and his staff are focused not on the chatter but on making sure they are prepared when the time comes.
A second resolution was an agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for the CDC to provide vaccine to the Genesee County Health Department at no cost to the county.
This is the first step for us to receive the vaccine when it becomes available, Pettit said, adding that he hasnt heard of any vaccines that have cleared phase three of their trials yet.
A third resolution was a request to create a full-time COVID-19 Response Specialist, a Civil Service position, effective Nov. 12, 2020. The position would befunded by COVID-19 monies until June 30, 2022, at no cost to the county.
Pettit said coronavirus funding previously created one job and now the department needs this one, borrowing the title from a similar position in Wyoming County.
He said he wasnt sure of the pay rate, thinking it was around $17 to $18 per hour, and noted that the jobis tied to Orleans County and could lead to a full-time position.
Responsibilities of the Response Specialist would be to assist with contact tracing, testing and eventually vaccination. Pettit said the county continues to utilize the services of contact tracers employed by the state.
The Human Services Committee approved all three resolutions, which now will be forwarded to the Ways & Means Committee on Wednesday.
In a related development, the committee approved a contract renewal with Mary Younge of Rochester to provide nursing services on an as-needed basis for 2021. Pettit said Younge provided support to the countyat the outset of the coronavirus outbreak in March, April and May.
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Director of the AstraZeneca Oncology Research and Development area, Josep Baselga
The distribution of the vaccine against COVID-19 could be done in advanced phase at the end of March 2021, according to estimates by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, in charge of supplying the European Union (EU) with 300 million doses.
This was indicated this Monday, November 2nd, by the director of the AstraZeneca Oncology Research and Development area, Josep Baselga, who estimates that by the beginning of next year the pharmaceutical company will have about three billion vaccines that he trusts will be verified as effective.
The complicated thing will be to design how to distribute them given the demand that will exist, so Balsega estimates that until the end of the first quarter of 2021 the vaccines (if they work), would not be in the advanced distribution phase.
AstraZeneca expects that before the end of the year one, two or three of the four vaccines it is experimenting with will start to give good results.
In the case of this companys vaccines, the forecast is that two doses will be applied: the second 28 days after the first.
Right now there are 175 different vaccines in the world that are being worked on, 35 of them in clinical trials with patients, and 10 in their final verification phase, explained Balsega in radio statements.
The vaccine will help, but it is not the only solution, he said and recalled that AstraZeneca is also developing a treatment for monoclonal antibodies, with which antibodies from people who have passed the virus to potential patients would be applied.
There are 16 of these treatments in development and one in particular that is considered exceptionally good.
However, he was confident that after a winter that will be horrible next summer will be relatively normal, and argued that those who do not want to be vaccinated should not be forced to do so, because in his opinion this is a principle of individual freedom that is undeniable .
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Even before the word pandemic entered daily conversation, Johnson & Johnson scientists were digging into the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus and assessing vaccine candidates.
That was January. At the same time, J&J communications exec Seema Kumar and her team were trying to figure out how to let the world know.
The ambitious idea they came up witha live weekly video series with multiple guests,hosted by journalist Lisa Linglaunched in April as The Road to a Vaccine and continues today. It airs every Tuesday at noon ET on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and JNJ.com.
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Even though we still didnt know where the journey would take us, the moment we began to work on a vaccine we felt we had to bring our audience along with us, Kumar, global head of J&Js office of innovation, global health and scientific engagement, said Friday during Fierce Pharma Marketings Digital Pharma Innovation Week.
RELATED: J&J tracks the path to a COVID-19 vaccine in new online news series
The behind-the-scenes show featuresJ&J researchers and execs such as Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels, M.D., but also spotlights public health officials like Johns Hopkins University's Tom Inglesby, M.D., and even well-known advocates like actor Laverne Cox.
While it began as an exploration of how a vaccine would be created, the show has also taken on COVID-19-related topics such as mental health, school reopenings and racial disparities.
At its core is science, Kumar saidfeeding peoples hunger for knowledge, especially during the early days of the pandemicbut also demystifying the company's processes and, in doing so, increasing transparency that canhelpbuild trust.
RELATED: J&J, Pfizer comms chiefs talk vaccine pledge, politics, inequality and getting to a 'better normal'
People are interested in science. We just need to make it relevant and understandable and relatable, she said. "I think we need to take science from being available to a privileged few who speak that language to making it accessible for all.
Public engagement with the series backs that upmore than l00 millionviews from people in 120 countries around the world since it began. For Kumar, even more affirming are the comments and feedback from viewers who've thanked J&J for "being honest or noted that the videos increased their trust in science.
At the end of the day, science is about society, and society has to understand the processes of science, she said.
Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Servicesannounced its readiness with all required capabilities for the distribution of potential COVID-19 vaccine across Africa and the rest of the world.
Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services was instrumental in facilitating the flow of medical supplies including PPEs across the globe in support of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying its state-of-the-art cargo terminal, which is the largest in Africa with annual capacity of around one million tons and compartmentalized temperature controlled cold storage facilities.
Commenting on Ethiopians preparation for the vaccine distribution, Ethiopian Group CEO Tewolde GebreMariam remarked, Ethiopian Pharma Wing will repeat its remarkable and globally recognized success in leading the fast delivery of PPE few months ago with similar delivery speed, professional handling and maintaining the cool chain during the forthcoming global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine. We are the major cargo partners of WHO, WFP donor governments and philanthropists in facilitating the flow of essential medical supplies owing to our massive cargo facility including our Pharma Wing, our large dedicated freighter fleet and well trained manpower. As the world prepares to welcome COVID-19 vaccine, We will be at the forefront to further discharge our responsibility in the distribution of the vaccine across the globe.
Equipped with different climate chambers ranging between -23OC to 25OC covering an area of 54,000m2, dedicated cool dollies, dedicated pharma team, lease/handling of Envirotainer & DoKaSCH-TS active containers, real-time temperature monitoring system and fully temperature controlled operation, the Pharma Wing of Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services is best suited for handling of pharmaceuticals and all types medical supplies. Additionally, leveraging the naturally air-conditioned weather of its home base Addis Ababa, Ethiopian guarantees safe and seamless cool chain logistics for handling temperature sensitive healthcare products.
It is to be recalled that Ethiopian demonstrated remarkable agility in its response to the increased cargo demand in the wake of the pandemic by reconfiguring around 25 passenger aircraft into freighters using its own internal MRO capabilities besides deploying all its 12 dedicated cargo aircraft.
WFP made Addis Ababa cargo terminal a distribution hub for all humanitarian aids considering the industry standard resources and capabilities of Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services and the super-efficient service delivery demonstrated during the distribution of medical supplies provided by different donors including Jack Ma Foundation, WHO and the Chinese Government among others. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Ethiopian operated over 360 charter flights to transport PPEs over 100 countries across 5 continents.
Nov. 3 (UPI) -- U.S. drugmaker Pfizer will use its own distribution network for its COVID-19 vaccine rather than a going through the U.S. government's designated coordinator, a company official has said.
The pharma company will seek to ensure "end-to-end visibility and control" in its distribution of millions of doses of its vaccine, once it's approved for use in the United States, according to Pfizer Vice President for Biopharma Global Supply Chain Tanya Alcorn.
Alcorn said rather than tap healthcare logistics provider McKesson, as recommended by federal regulators, the serious challenges involved in doling out a vaccine requires Pfizer to keep tight control of distribution.
She made the comments during a webinar with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce webinar.
"We value McKesson... but early on we set up a distribution model where we would ship direct from our U.S. manufacturing facility and our U.S. distribution center direct to the points of use," Alcorn added.
Under the government's Operation Warp Speed, drugmakers are expected to deliver vaccines to McKesson centers, which in turn will coordinate distribution to hospitals and other vaccination points.
Alcorn said Pfizer is instead developing its own plan, in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We're working with trusted [logistics] partners," she said. "That will allow us to have end-to-end visibility and control."
Pfizer said last week its late-stage human clinical trial for its BNT162 vaccine is close to full enrollment, with more than 42,000 participants. It has partnered with German drugmaker BioNTech to develop the vaccine, which is one of several in development worldwide.
CLEVELAND They voted from cars and at outdoor tables. They stood in lines spaced far apart. They strapped on masks and pumped sanitizer into their palms. All across America on Tuesday, voters cast ballots in a presidential election in which the uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic was both a top issue and a threat.
As millions of Americans turned out to vote, the nation was facing a rapidly escalating pandemic that is concentrated in some of the very states seen as critical in determining the outcome of the presidential race. From Wisconsin to North Carolina, infections were on the rise as the nation barreled toward 10 million total cases.
The virus that has left millions of people out of work and killed more than 230,000 people in the United States will be one of the most significant challenges for the winner of the presidential race, and it loomed over every chapter of the election, down to the final ballots.
In the last hours of campaigning, President Trump who, regardless of the election outcome, will be in charge of the nations response to the pandemic for the next two and a half critical months was at odds with his own coronavirus advisers and suggested that he might fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious-disease expert. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told voters in a final pitch that the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump.
In Virginia, voters temperatures were taken at some polling sites. In Wisconsin, the mayor of Wausau, a small city where cases are spiking and tensions are high, issued an order banning guns at polling places. And in Texas, an election judge did not wear a face covering, prompting accusations of voter intimidation and such intense heckling that the judge called the local sheriff to report that she felt unsafe.
The pandemic, which drove record numbers of Americans to cast ballots early or by mail, rarely strayed far from voters minds.
I just dont want another shutdown, said Rachel Ausperk, 29, a first-time voter who said she chose President Trump in Ohio, a highly contested state that reported more new coronavirus cases on Tuesday than on any day since the nations outbreak began more than eight months ago.
In Miami, Eddie Gil, 50, said that he, too, had been guided by concerns about the coronavirus and how it was being handled. He said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but chose Mr. Biden this year, in part because of the presidents handling of the pandemic.
The government has failed all the small businesses, said Mr. Gil, who opened a gym in January but said the pandemic forced him to close. Im very disappointed, he added. I thought putting a real estate businessman in office would drain the swamp.
The coronavirus outbreak shaped nearly every aspect of the 2020 election, and only intensified as voters went to the polls. The United States shattered records in recent days, reporting more than 85,000 new cases a day, nearly double the caseload at the start of October. Deaths have increased slowly to more than 800 daily, more than in early July but far fewer than in the spring. Though the country is conducting more testing, that does not fully account for the increase in cases.
In a collision of two powerful forces shaping 2020, the virus was raging most ominously across political battlegrounds around the Great Lakes. Several swing states recorded records or near highs on Tuesday, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which have all announced more cases over the last seven days than in any other weeklong period during the pandemic.
In Wisconsin, a prize eyed by both parties, more than 100,000 virus cases have been reported in the past month, and deaths and hospitalizations have spiked, leaving many to fear that worse news could be ahead.
Voters who entered a polling location in Kenosha, Wis., first passed a handwashing station outside the front doors. Then there was a kiosk of free masks, wipes and hand sanitizer just inside the lobby. The room where they voted was a large, airy gymnasium with tables spaced at least 15 feet apart.
David Sconzert, a poll worker, said he carefully considered whether to show up on Election Day at all. A cancer survivor, he said he tested positive for the coronavirus in early October yet feared he did not have the immunity that would prevent him from catching it again.
I almost called it off, he said. But then I just thought, No. Im taking a chance.
Inside a community basketball gym in Cleveland, poll workers fastened on masks and sat down behind cardboard and plastic shields that encased them on three sides. Looking more like a row of bank tellers, they greeted voters, who were expected to give an electronic signature by slipping on disposable plastic finger shields and then guiding their hands under a narrow opening. Voter booths, spaced out around the gym, had been meticulously measured with a six-foot rope.
Nov. 4, 2020, 12:56 a.m. ET
Raven Payne, a 25-year-old first-time poll worker, had one job all day: sanitation. Dressed in a bright yellow vest, plastic gloves, a face mask and a face shield, she had a distinctly buglike appearance as she hovered around the room, swooping in to clean, wipe and scrub each booth in between voters.
A mile away, about 40 people sick with the coronavirus were lying in beds at the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic. Across Ohio, more people are hospitalized with the virus than at any other time during the pandemic; around the country, more than 50,000 people were in a hospital with the coronavirus on Tuesday, up 67 percent from a month ago.
When Americans found themselves voting in the middle of the 1918 flu pandemic, infections also surged in October, peaking around Election Day. After voters turned out for the midterm elections that year, deaths continued at a fairly high rate throughout November and into December. At the same time, some places were lifting restrictions on public gatherings and people were flocking to the streets to celebrate the armistice ending World War I, two factors that contributed to new infections.
This year, experts are hopeful that the flood of mail-in voting and precautions at the polls will protect Election Day gatherings from becoming superspreader events. But with cases soaring nationwide and health officials overwhelmed, it may be difficult to determine in the coming weeks what effect voting may have had.
The next few weeks are seen as crucial for controlling the pandemic, as colder weather forces people indoors and families gather around the table at Thanksgiving.
Heres a guide to The Timess election night coverage,no matter when, how or how often you want to consume it.
No matter the outcome of the election, one person will be in charge of the nations Covid-19 response through the next critical period: Mr. Trump.
The president, who was hospitalized for the virus in October, has largely shut down the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and in recent days downplayed the countrys spiraling cases, saying that the nation is rounding the corner.
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White Houses coronavirus response coordinator, issued an urgent plea on Monday for an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented, in a private memo that was earlier reported by The Washington Post.
In many places, voters and poll workers took extraordinary measures on Tuesday to try to protect themselves. They wore American-flag-themed masks, used napkins to drop off votes in ballot boxes and even passed ballots with the help of salad tongs.
People just love the tongs, said Tommy Nickerson, a ballot worker in Oakland, Calif., where workers in face masks used tongs to collect ballots from drive-through motorists. Across the street, people cast ballots at tables set up outside.
Some thought the virus and all the precautions was overhyped.
I dont think its as big as they say, said Ann Roth, a 57-year-old voter from Papillion in suburban Omaha, who cast her ballot for Mr. Trump. People are going to do what theyre going to do.
In Michigan, another key swing state that Mr. Trump carried by a razor-thin margin four years ago, Democrats were focused on driving up turnout in Detroit. The pandemic was especially devastating for the city.
It hit us like an atomic bomb, said Ronald Lockett, the executive director of the Northwest Activities Center, where there was a line out the door to vote on Tuesday.
Mr. Lockett said he had the coronavirus this year, had to cut his staff during the pandemic, and had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because he had not been able to hold events. He cast his vote for Mr. Biden, he said, in large part because he hoped the former vice president would guide America out of the pandemic.
This election, he said, is going to determine the future of Covid.
Sarah Mervosh reported from Cleveland and Mitch Smith from Chicago. Reporting was contributed by Mike Baker in Portland, Ore., Julie Bosman in Kenosha, Wis., J. David Goodman in University Park, Texas, Manny Fernandez in Houston, Thomas Fuller in Oakland, Calif., Neil MacFarquhar in New York, Patricia Mazzei in Miami, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio in Detroit, Dionne Searcey in Omaha, Lucy Tompkins in Bismarck, N.D., and Michael D. Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg in Washington.
People with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic can spread the disease without any outward signs that they're sick. But a newly developed AI, with a keen algorithmic ear, might be able to detect asymptomatic cases from the sounds of people's coughs, according to a new study.
A group of researchers at MIT recently developed an artificial intelligence model that can detect asymptomatic COVID-19 cases by listening to subtle differences in coughs between healthy people and infected people. The researchers are now testing their AI in clinical trials and have already started the process of seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for it to be used as a screening tool.
The algorithm is based on previous models the team developed to detect conditions such as pneumonia, asthma and even Alzheimer's disease, a memory-loss condition that can also cause other degradation in the body such as weakened vocal cords and respiratory performance.
Related: Coronavirus live update
Indeed, it is the Alzheimer's model that the researchers adapted in an effort to detect COVID-19. "The sounds of talking and coughing are both influenced by the vocal cords and surrounding organs," co-author Brian Subirana, a research scientist in MIT's Auto-ID Laboratory said in a statement. "Things we easily derive from fluent speech, AI can pick up simply from coughs, including things like the person's gender, mother tongue or even emotional state. There's in fact sentiment embedded in how you cough."
First, they created a website where volunteers both healthy and those with COVID-19 could record coughs using their cellphones or computers; they also filled out a survey with questions about their diagnosis and any symptoms they were experiencing. People were asked to record "forced coughs," such as the cough you let out when your doctor tells you to cough while listening to your chest with a stethoscope.
Through this website, the researchers gathered more than 70,000 individual recordings of forced-cough samples, according to the statement. Of those, 2,660 were from patients who had COVID-19, with or without symptoms. They then used 4,256 of the samples to train their AI model and 1,064 of the samples to test their model to see whether or not it could detect the difference in coughs between COVID-19 patients and healthy people.
They found that their AI was able to pick up differences in the coughs related to four features specific to COVID-19 (which were also used in their Alzheimer's algorithm) muscular degradation, vocal cord strength, sentiment such as doubt and frustration and respiratory and lung performance.
The AI model correctly identified 98.5% of people with COVID-19, and correctly ruled out COVID-19 in 94.2% of people without the disease. For asymptomatic people, the model correctly identifed 100% of people with COVID-19, and correctly ruled out COVID-19 in 83.2% of people without the disease.
These are "a pretty encouraging set of numbers," and the results are "very interesting," said Dr. Anthony Lubinsky, the medical director of respiratory care at NYU Langone Tisch Hospital who was not a part of the study.
But "whether or not this performs well enough in a real-world setting to recommend its use as a screening tool would need further study," Lubinsky told Live Science. What's more, further research is needed to ensure the AI would accurately evaluate coughs from people of all ages and ethnicities, he said (The authors also mention this limitation in their paper).
Related: Most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates
If a doctor were to listen to the forced cough of a person with asymptomatic COVID-19, they likely wouldn't be able to hear anything out of the ordinary. It's "not a thing that a human ear would be easily able to do," Lubinsky said. Though follow-up studies are definitely needed, if the software proves effective, this AI which will have a linked app if approved could be "very useful" for finding asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, especially if the tool is cheap and easy to use, he added.
The AI can "absolutely" help curb the spread of the pandemic by helping to detect people with asymptomatic disease, Subirana told Live Science in an email. The AI can also detect the difference between people who have other illnesses such as the flu and those who have COVID-19, but it's much better at distinguishing COVID-19 cases from healthy cases, he said.
The team is now seeking regulatory approval for the app that incorporates the AI model, which may come within the next month, he said. They are also testing their AI in clinical trials in a number of hospitals around the world, according to the paper.
And they aren't the only team working on detecting COVID-19 through sound. Similar projects are underway in Cambridge University, Carnegie Mellon University and the U.K. start-up Novoic, according to BBC.
"Pandemics could be a thing of the past if pre-screening tools are always-on in the background and constantly improved," the authors wrote in the paper. Those always-listening tools could be smart speakers or smart phones, they wrote.
The study, partly supported by the drug company Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, was published Sep. 30 in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.
Originally published on Live Science.
