Long-time Slashdot reader necro81 writes: For several years, Zipline has deployed autonomous, fixed-wing airplane drones for medical supply deliveries in Rwanda. Now they have received permission to test their aircraft in the U.S., ferrying COVID-19 supplies from a depot to a hospital in North Carolina. The practical benefit is small: the cargo is modest amounts of PPE that could have been…
Tag: hospital
As Virus Infections Surge, Countries End Lockdowns
Still struggling with rising coronavirus cases, India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have decided they must end lockdowns and restart their economies. From a report: At Nigambodh Ghat, the oldest cremation grounds in India’s capital, the bodies keep coming. One ambulance arrives with five inside. Then another. Then another, in an endless display of death. As the coronavirus pandemic surges in…
China, Scientists Dismiss Harvard Study Suggesting COVID-19 Was Spreading in Wuhan in August
Beijing dismissed as “ridiculous” a Harvard Medical School study of hospital traffic and search engine data that suggested the new coronavirus may already have been spreading in China last August, and scientists said it offered no convincing evidence of when the outbreak began. From a report: The research, which has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists, used satellite imagery of hospital…
UK Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trial, Calling It ‘Useless’ for Covid-19 Patients
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: British scientists halted a major drug trial on Friday after it found that the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential “game changer” in the pandemic, was “useless” at treating COVID-19 patients. “This is not a treatment for COVID-19. It doesn’t work,” Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the…
COVID-19 Pandemic Causes 42% Drop In ER Visits Nationwide, CDC Says
schwit1 shares a report from UPI: Visits to hospital U.S. emergency rooms have dropped by more than 40 percent so far in 2020, compared to the same period last year, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC researchers compared total visits so far this year to the same five-month period in 2019….
Governments and WHO Changed COVID-19 Policy Based On Suspect Data From Tiny US Company
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known U.S. healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. Surgisphere, whose employees appear to…
As Coronavirus Hospitalizations Rise in the US, Many States Hide Their Data
In America, “Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus’ spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly,” reports Politico: In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing…
Study of 96,000 Covid-19 Patients Finds Hydroxychloroquine Increased Their Risk of Dying
“The drug US President Donald Trump said he was taking to ward off Covid-19 actually increases the risk of patients with the disease dying from it,” reports the BBC, citing a new study published Friday in the Lancet. “The study said there were no benefits to treating patients with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine…” Hydroxychloroquine is safe for malaria, and conditions like…
‘Project BioMed’ Fights for the Right to Repair Medical Devices
Long-time Slashdot reader chicksdaddy writes: One of the less-reported stories of this pandemic is the myriad of ways in which COVID has exposed changes to the medical device market and the increasingly draconian software licensing practices that have made servicing and repairing medical devices much more difficult, slow and expensive. In its latest episode, Security Ledger Podcast goes behind the scenes…
Murder hornets? 5 questions answered about Asian giant hornets in North America
Are ‘murder hornets’ from Asia invading North America? An entomologist who lived among them in Japan explains what’s true about the predatory insects. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/what-are-asian-giant-hornets-dangerous…