Tag Archives: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

U.S. denounces terms for WHO-led inquiry into COVID origins

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States, which has accused China of having hidden the extent of its coronavirus outbreak, called on Tuesday for a “transparent and inclusive” WHO-led international investigation into the origin of the pandemic, criticizing its current terms.

The Trump administration has accused the World Health Organization of being “China-centric” and of being its puppet, which WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has denied.

The virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, is believed to have emerged in the Chinese central city of Wuhan late last year, possibly from bats at a market with live animals.

Chinese scientists are carrying out research into its origins and how it jumped the species barrier. A WHO-led international team formed in September is to develop plans for longer-term studies building on China’s findings, according to the WHO’s published terms of reference.

Garrett Grigsby, head of the global affairs office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told the WHO’s ministerial assembly that member states had been informed of the investigation’s terms of reference only a few days ago.

The terms were “not negotiated in a transparent way with all WHO member states” and “the investigation itself appears to be inconsistent” with its mandate, he said, without elaborating.

“Understanding the origins of COVID-19 through a transparent and inclusive investigation is what must be done to meet the mandate,” Grigsby said.

Britain called for prioritizing the probe, adding: “We expect the investigation and its outcomes to be grounded in robust science.”

Sun Yang, of China’s National Health Commission, did not mention the investigation in his speech on Tuesday, but said that China supports “WHO’s continued leadership role”.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn, speaking for the European Union on Monday, called for “full transparency and cooperation” during all phases of the investigation.

WHO’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said on Oct. 30 that the WHO-led team and its Chinese counterparts had held a first virtual meeting regarding joint investigations and would deploy on the ground in time.

A separate independent panel said on Tuesday it was working to establish “an accurate and authoritative chronology” behind the first outbreaks and responses. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf were named in July to co-lead the WHO panel.

Trump announced a temporary halt to U.S. funding to the WHO in April, prompting condemnation from many world leaders. The United Nations said in July it had received formal notification of the U.S. decision to leave the body next year.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Catherine Evans and Nick Macfie)

Special Report: Plastic pandemic – COVID-19 trashed the recycling dream

By Joe Brock

(Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a rush for plastic.

From Wuhan to New York, demand for face shields, gloves, takeaway food containers and bubble wrap for online shopping has surged. Since most of that cannot be recycled, so has the waste.

But there is another consequence. The pandemic has intensified a price war between recycled and new plastic, made by the oil industry. It’s a war recyclers worldwide are losing, price data and interviews with more than two dozen businesses across five continents show.

“I really see a lot of people struggling,” Steve Wong, CEO of Hong-Kong based Fukutomi Recycling and chairman of the China Scrap Plastics Association told Reuters in an interview. “They don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The reason: Nearly every piece of plastic begins life as a fossil fuel. The economic slowdown has punctured demand for oil. In turn, that has cut the price of new plastic.

Already since 1950, the world has created 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, 91% of which has never been recycled, according to a 2017 study published in the journal Science. Most is hard to recycle, and many recyclers have long depended on government support. New plastic, known to the industry as “virgin” material, can be half the price of the most common recycled plastic.

Since COVID-19, even drinks bottles made of recycled plastic – the most commonly recycled plastic item – have become less viable. The recycled plastic to make them is 83% to 93% more expensive than new bottle-grade plastic, according to market analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS).

The pandemic hit as politicians in many countries promised to wage war on waste from single-use plastics. China, which used to import more than half the world’s traded plastic waste, banned imports of most of it in 2018. The European Union plans to ban many single-use plastic items from 2021. The U.S. Senate is considering a ban on single-use plastic and may introduce legal recycling targets.

Plastic, most of which does not decompose, is a significant driver of climate change.

The manufacture of four plastic bottles alone releases the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of driving one mile in a car, according to the World Economic Forum, based on a study by the drinks industry. The United States burns six times more plastic than it recycles, according to research in April 2019 by Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and former vice chair of the U.S. Federal climate committee.

But the coronavirus has accentuated a trend to create more, not less, plastic trash.

The oil and gas industry plans to spend around $400 billion over the next five years on plants to make raw materials for virgin plastic, according to a study in September by Carbon Tracker, an energy think tank.

This is because, as a growing fleet of electric vehicles and improved engine efficiency reduce fuel demand, the industry hopes rising demand for new plastic can assure future growth in demand for oil and gas. It is counting on soaring use of plastic-based consumer goods by millions of new middle-class consumers in Asia and elsewhere.

“Over the next few decades, population and income growth are expected to create more demand for plastics, which help support safety, convenience and improved living standards,” ExxonMobil spokeswoman Sarah Nordin told Reuters.

Most companies say they share concerns about plastic waste and are supporting efforts to reduce it. However, their investments in these efforts are a fraction of those going into making new plastic, Reuters found.

Reuters surveyed 12 of the largest oil and chemicals firms globally – BASF, Chevron, Dow, Exxon, Formosa Plastics, INEOS, LG Chem, LyondellBasell, Mitsubishi Chemical, SABIC, Shell and Sinopec. Only a handful gave details of how much they are investing in waste reduction. Three declined to comment in detail or did not respond.

Most said they channel their efforts through a group called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which is also backed by consumer goods companies, and which has pledged $1.5 billion over the next five years on that effort. Its 47 members, most of whom are in the plastics industry, had combined annual revenue of almost $2.5 trillion last year, according to a Reuters tally of company results.

In total, commitments by the Alliance and the companies surveyed amounted to less than $2 billion over five years, or $400 million a year, the Reuters survey found. That’s a fraction of their sales.

Plans to invest so heavily in new plastic are “quite a concerning move,” said Lisa Beauvilain, Head of Sustainability at Impax Asset Management, a fund with $18.5 billion under management.

“Countries with often undeveloped waste management and recycling infrastructure will be ill-equipped to handle even larger volumes of plastic waste,” she said. “We are literally drowning in plastics.”

Since the coronavirus struck, recyclers worldwide told Reuters, their businesses have shrunk, by more than 20% in Europe, by 50% in parts of Asia and as much as 60% for some firms in the United States.

Greg Janson, whose St. Louis, Missouri, recycling company QRS has been in business for 46 years, says his position would have been unimaginable a decade ago: The United States has become one of the cheapest places to make virgin plastic, so more is coming onto the market.

“The pandemic exacerbated this tsunami,” he said.

The oil and chemicals companies that Reuters surveyed said plastic can be part of the solution to global challenges related to a growing population. Six said they were also developing new technologies to reuse waste plastic.

Some said other packaging products can cause more emissions than plastics; because plastic is light, it is indispensable for the world’s consumers and can help reduce emissions. A few called on governments to improve waste management infrastructure.

“Higher production capacities do not necessarily mean more plastic waste pollution,” said a spokesman at BASF SE of Germany, the world’s biggest chemicals producer, adding that it has been innovating for many years in packaging materials to reduce the resources required.

The new plastic wave is breaking on shores across the globe.

MAKE PLASTIC

Richard Pontillas, 33, runs a family-owned “sari-sari” or “sundries” store in Quezon City, the most populous metropolis in the Philippines. The liquid goods he sells used to be packaged in glass. Many customers, in fact, brought in their own bottles to be refilled.

Merchants like him are among key targets for the plastic industry, looking to extend a trend established after 1907, when Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite. Since World War Two, mass-produced plastic has fueled economic growth and spawned a new era of consumerism and convenience packaging.

“Many years ago … we relied on goods repackaged in bottles and plastic bags,” said Pontillas, whose store sells rice, condiments and sachets of coffee, chocolate drink and seasonings.

Today, thousands of small-scale vendors in the developing world stock daily goods in plastic pouches, or sachets, which hang in strips from the roofs of roadside shacks and cost a few cents a go.

Already, 164 million such sachets are used every day in the Philippines, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, an NGO. That’s nearly 60 billion a year.

Consumer goods firms including Nestle and P&G say they are working hard to make their packaging either recyclable or reusable. For example, P&G said it has a project in schools in the Manila region which aims to collect one million sachets for “upcycling.”

But sachets are very difficult to recycle. They are just one form of pollution that the pandemic is adding to, clogging drains, polluting water, suffocating marine life and attracting rodents and disease-carrying insects.

So are face masks, which are made partly from plastic.

In March, China used 116 million of them – 12 times more than in February, official data show.

Total production of masks in China is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2020, according to a report by Chinese consultancy iiMedia Research. The United States generated an entire year’s worth of medical waste in two months at the height of the pandemic, according to another consultancy, Frost & Sullivan.

Even as the waste mounts, much is at stake for the oil industry.

Exxon forecasts that demand for petrochemicals will rise by 4% a year over the next few decades, the company said in an investor presentation in March.

And oil’s share of energy for transport will fall from more than 90% in 2018 to just under 80% or as low as 20% by 2050, BP Plc said in its annual market report in September.

Oil companies worry that environmental concerns may blunt petrochemical growth.

The U.N. said last year that 127 countries have adopted bans or other laws to manage plastic bags. BP’s chief economist Spencer Dale said in 2018 that global plastic bans could result in 2 million barrels per day of lower oil demand growth by 2040 – around 2% of current daily demand. The company declined further comment.

USE PLASTIC

This year alone, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BASF have announced petrochemical plant investments in China worth a combined $25 billion, tapping into rising demand for consumer goods in the world’s most populous country.

An additional 176 new petrochemical plants are planned in the next five years, of which nearly 80% will be in Asia, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says.

In the United States since 2010, energy companies have invested more than $200 billion in 333 plastic and other chemical projects, according to the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry body.

Those investments have come as the U.S. industry sought to capitalize on a sudden abundance of cheap natural gas released by the shale revolution.

The industry says disposable plastics have saved lives.

“Single-use plastics have been the difference between life and death during this pandemic,” Tony Radoszewski, president and CEO of the Plastic Industry Association (PLASTICS), the industry’s lobbying group in the United States, told Reuters. Bags for intravenous solutions and ventilators require single-use plastics, he said.

“Hospital gowns, gloves and masks are made from safe, sanitary plastic.”

In March, PLASTICS wrote to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, calling for a rollback of plastic bag bans on health grounds. It said plastic bags are safer because germs live on reusable bags and other substances.

Researchers led by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a U.S. government agency, found later that month that the coronavirus was still active on plastic after 72 hours, compared with up to 24 hours on cardboard and copper.

The industry’s letter was part of a long-standing campaign for single-use material.

The ACC’s managing director for plastics, Keith Christman, said the chemicals lobby is opposed to plastic bans because it believes consumers would switch to using other disposable materials like glass and paper, rather than reusing bags and bottles.

“The challenge comes when you ban plastic but the alternative might not be a reusable product … so it really wouldn’t accomplish much,” Christman said.

Plastic makes up 80% of marine debris, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global alliance backed by governments, NGOs and companies including Shell, which is also a member of the ACC.

Plastic pollution has been shown to be deadly to turtles, whales and baby seals and releases chemicals that we inhale, ingest or touch that cause a wide range of harms including hormonal disruption and cancer, the United Nations says.

RECYCLE?

Plastic recyclers have faced new problems in the pandemic.

Demand for recycled material from packaging businesses fell by 20% to 30% in Europe in the second quarter compared with the previous year, ICIS says.

At the same time, people who stayed at home created more recycling waste, said Sandra Castro, CEO of Extruplas, a Portuguese recycling firm which transforms recycled plastics into outdoor furniture.

“There are many recycling companies that may not be able to cope,” she said. “We need the industry to be able to provide a solution to the waste we produce.”

In the United States, QRS’s Janson said that for two months after the pandemic lockdowns, his orders were down 60% and he dropped his prices by 15%.

And the pandemic has added to costs for big consumer companies that use recycled plastic.

The Coca-Cola Co told Reuters in September it missed a target to get recycled plastic into half its UK packaging by early 2020 due to COVID-19 delays. The company said it hopes now to meet that by November.

Coca-Cola, Nestle and PepsiCo have been the world’s top three plastic polluters for two years running, according to a yearly brand audit by Break Free From Plastic, an NGO.

These companies have for decades made voluntary goals to increase recycled plastic in their products. They have largely failed to meet them. Coke and Nestle said it can be hard to get the plastic they need from recycled sources.

“We often pay more for recycled plastic than we would if we purchased virgin plastic,” a Nestle spokesperson said, adding that investment in recycled material was a company priority.

Asked how much they were investing in recycling and waste cleanup programs, the three companies named initiatives totaling $215 million over a seven-year period.

At current investment levels in recycling, brands will not meet their targets, analysts at ICIS and Wood Mackenzie say.

TOSS

Even if existing recycling pledges are met, the plastic going into the oceans is on course to rise from 11 million tonnes now to 29 million by 2040, according to a study published in June by Pew Trusts, an independent public interest group.

Cumulatively, this would reach 600 million tonnes – the weight of 3 million blue whales.

In response to mounting public concerns, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste says it will partner existing small-scale NGOs that clean up waste in developing countries.

One venture, which helps women earn money from selling plastic scrap in Ghana, says it has successfully diverted 35 tonnes of plastic from becoming litter since March 2017.

That’s less than 0.01% of the annual plastic waste generated in Ghana, or 2% of the plastic waste that the United States exported to Ghana last year, according to World Bank and U.S. trade data.

“We do realize change won’t happen overnight,” said Alliance president and CEO Jacob Duer. “What is important for us is that our projects are not seen as the end, but the beginning.”

In the Philippines, Vietnam and India, as much as 80% of the recycling industry was not operating during the height of the pandemic. And there was a 50% drop in demand for recycled plastic on average across South and Southeast Asia, according to Circulate Capital, a Singapore-based investor in Asian recycling operations.

“The combination of the impact of COVID-19 and low oil prices is like a double whammy” for plastic recycling, said Circulate’s CEO, Rob Kaplan.

“We’re seeing massive disruption.”

(Reporting by Joe Brock; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Quezon City, Catarina Demony in Lisbon, Noah Browning in London, Karen Lema in Manila, Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo and Marwa Rashad in Riyadh; Edited by Sara Ledwith)

U.S. HHS announces further $20 billion funding to healthcare providers

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced a fresh round of $20 billion funding for frontline healthcare providers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new allocation will take into account financial losses and changes in operating expenses caused by the coronavirus, the agency said, adding that providers that have already received relief fund payments can also apply for more funds.

Providers who have recently begun practice and behavioral health providers grappling with a surge in mental health and substance abuse issues since the virus outbreak can also apply.

The move comes as prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders surged in the second quarter compared to a year ago, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. government has announced billions of dollars in support for hospitals and medical providers to meet the increased expenses from rising COVID-19 cases and to cover lost revenues due to suspension of medical procedures and routine visits.

The HHS has already issued over $100 billion in relief funding to providers through prior distributions.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

U.S. government awards Novavax $1.6 billion for coronavirus vaccine

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The U.S. government has awarded Novavax Inc $1.6 billion to cover testing and manufacturing of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus in the United States, with the aim of delivering 100 million doses by January.

The award announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the biggest yet from “Operation Warp Speed,” the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

Shares in Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Novavax rose 29% to $102 in morning trading.

“What this Warp Speed award does is it pays for production of 100 million doses, which would be delivered starting in the fourth quarter of this year, and may be completed by January or February of next year,” Novavax Chief Executive Stanley Erck told Reuters.

It will also cover the cost of running a large Phase III trial, the final stage of human testing.

Erck said Novavax expects results of its Phase I trial testing the vaccine’s safety within the next week or so. The company aims to start mid-stage trials in August or September, with Phase III testing starting in October, Erck added.

The HHS announcement follows a $456 million investment in Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate in March, a $486 million award to Moderna Inc in April, and up to $1.2 billion in support in May for AstraZeneca PLC’s vaccine being developed with Oxford University. The U.S. government also awarded Emergent Biosolutions Inc $628 million to expand domestic manufacturing capacity for a potential coronavirus vaccine and drugs to treat COVID-19.

The addition of Novavax’s candidate to Operation Warp Speed’s portfolio “increases the odds that we will have at least one safe, effective vaccine as soon as the end of this year,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.

Besides the massive cash infusion for Novavax, the U.S. government inked a $450 million contract with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc to make and supply its antibody cocktail for COVID-19.

Novavax is somewhat of a dark horse in the race for a coronavirus vaccine. The company was not on the list of vaccine finalists for Warp Speed previously reported by the New York Times that included Moderna, AstraZeneca, Pfizer Inc, J&J and Merck & Co.

In May, Novavax received an additional $388 million in funding for COVID-19 vaccine development from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a private foundation, after a $4 million investment in March. In June, the U.S. Defense Department awarded the company $60 million to support manufacturing of 10 million doses of its vaccine in 2020.

‘A BIG SCALE UP’

The company is in the process of transferring its vaccine technology to an unnamed contract manufacturer that has two large manufacturing facilities, its CEO said. That is in addition to the work being done by Emergent Biosolutions, which is making doses to supply the company’s smaller early and mid-stage clinical trials.

By early next year, Novavax expects to be able to make 50 million doses a month in the United States.

“It’s a big scale up in a few different manufacturing sites in the United States,” Erck said. “What it leaves us with is the capacity of making many more doses in the U.S. in 2021.”

Novavax did not start human safety trials until late May. One reason for the delay is that the vaccine is grown in insect cells, a process that can take 30 days before company scientists can start purifying it and making it in bulk.

“You lose a month or so there, but I don’t think we’re behind because of our data,” Erck said, referring to animal data showing a strong immune response and high levels of virus-killing antibodies.

Besides Moderna, the company trails two other candidates – one from AstraZeneca and Oxford University and one from Pfizer and BioNTech.

Jefferies analyst Jared Holz said the cash infusion “places Novavax in a very enviable position should its data look compelling later in the year.”

Although Novavax has not yet produced a licensed vaccine, Sanofi SA uses the same basic technology to make flu vaccine, “so the risk of us not succeeding is pretty low,” Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development for Novavax, said in a telephone interview.

The Novavax vaccine works in conjunction with an adjuvant – a substance that boosts the immune response to help the body build a robust defense against the virus.

Currently, Novavax makes its adjuvant in Sweden. The company is building up U.S. manufacturing capacity for its adjuvant “so that we can make upwards of a billion doses of adjuvant in the United States,” Erck said.

Novavax also has a manufacturing plant in the Czech Republic and hopes to have two other plants in Europe and one in Asia, Erck said. The company is also working with a manufacturer in India. The aim there is to make more than 100 million doses a month, Erck said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Will Dunham)

U.S. secures 300 million doses of potential AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine

By Aakash B, Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton

BENGALURU/LONDON (Reuters) – The United States has secured almost a third of the first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work.

While not yet proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen by world leaders as the only real way to restart their stalled economies, and even to get an edge over global competitors.

After President Donald Trump demanded a vaccine, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agreed to provide up to $1.2 billion to accelerate British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s vaccine development and secure 300 million doses for the United States.

“This contract with AstraZeneca is a major milestone in Operation Warp Speed’s work toward a safe, effective, widely available vaccine by 2021,” U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said. The first doses could be available in the United States as early as October, according to a statement from HHS.

The vaccine, previously known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and now as AZD1222, was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca. Immunity to the new coronavirus is uncertain and so the use of vaccines is unclear.

The U.S. deal allows a late-stage, or Phase III, clinical trial of the vaccine with 30,000 people in the United States.

Cambridge, England-based AstraZeneca said it had concluded agreements for at least 400 million doses of the vaccine and secured manufacturing capacity for 1 billion doses, with first deliveries due to begin in September.

Now the most valuable company on Britain’s blue-chip FTSE 100 Index, AstraZeneca has already agreed to deliver 100 million doses to people in Britain, with 30 million as soon as September. Ministers have promised Britain will get first access to the vaccine.

VACCINE SCRAMBLE

With leaders across the world surveying some of the worst economic destruction since at least World War Two and the deaths of more than 327,000 people, many are scrambling for a vaccine.

The U.S. government has struck deals to support vaccine development with Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Moderna and Sanofi, sparking fears the richest countries will be able to protect their citizens first.

Sanofi’s chief angered the French government earlier this month when he said vaccine doses produced in the United States could go to U.S. patients first, given the country had supported the research financially.

“We have a lot of things happening on the vaccine front or the therapeutic front,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the AstraZeneca announcement. “You’re going to have a lot of big announcements over the next week or two” on therapeutics.

Trump, during a Thursday visit to a Ford Motor Co plant in Michigan, said the U.S. military is “in gear so we can give out 150 to 250 million shots quickly.”

AstraZeneca said it was in talks with governments and partners around the world – such as the Serum Institute of India – to increase access and production and is speaking to various organizations on fair allocation and distribution.

“We would like to thank the U.S. and UK governments for their substantial support to accelerate the development and production of the vaccine,” AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, has dedicated one of its facilities with a capacity to produce up to 400 million doses annually to producing the Oxford vaccine.

“We are scaling up on a conservative basis of about 4 to 5 million doses a month to begin with,” Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla told Reuters, adding the company was in discussions with AstraZeneca.

COVID-19 PROTECTION?

A Phase I/II clinical trial of AZD1222 began last month to assess safety, immunogenicity and efficacy in over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 across several trial centers in southern England. Data from the trial is expected shortly.

There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19.

Governments, drugmakers and researchers are working on around 100 programs. Experts are predicting a safe, effective means of preventing the disease could take 12 to 18 months to develop.

Only a handful of the vaccines in development have advanced to human trials, an indicator of safety and efficacy, and the stage at which most fail.

“AstraZeneca recognizes that the vaccine may not work but is committed to progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at risk,” it said.

Other drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, J&J and Sanofi are in various stages of vaccine development.

U.S.-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals said Wednesday its experimental vaccine produced protective antibodies and immune system responses in mice and guinea pigs.

And Moderna this week released positive data for its potential vaccine, which it said produced protective antibodies in a small group of healthy volunteers.

(Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Zeba Siddiqui in New Delhi; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Alexander Smith, Jan Harvey, Mark Potter, Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler)

U.S. government gives states nearly $2 billion to combat opioid crisis

FILE PHOTO: An exterior view of the United States Health and Human Services Building on C Street Soutwest in Washington, U.S., July 29, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Wednesday it will offer states more than $1.8 billion in new funding to fight the opioid epidemic.

The funds will be used for expanding access to treatments for opioid overdosing and to gather case data from across states, the HHS said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will spend $900 million over three years – about $301 million in the first year – to help states and territories track overdose data as closely as possible, the HHS said https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2019/09/04/trump-administration-announces-1-8-billion-funding-states-combating-opioid.html in a statement.

Meanwhile, HHS unit Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is awarding about $932 million to support prevention, treatment and recovery services.

Prescription opioid pain treatments and drugs like heroin and the more potent fentanyl were responsible for 47,600 U.S. deaths in 2017, according to the government, with only a small decline last year.

Drugmakers such as Johnson & Johnson and Endo International Plc are facing several lawsuits brought by states, counties and municipalities that seek to hold the companies responsible for opioid abuse nationwide.

A U.S. judge on Tuesday rejected efforts by major drugmakers, pharmacies and distributors to dismiss claims that they caused the nation’s opioid crisis, clearing the way for a landmark trial even as the judge pushes for a nationwide settlement.

(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Trump administration bans abortion referrals at U.S.-funded clinics

FILE PHOTO: A sign is pictured at the entrance to a Planned Parenthood building in New York August 31, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Friday that taxpayer-funded family planning clinics which primarily serve low-income Americans will no longer be able to refer patients for abortions, a move that critics vowed to challenge in court.

The new regulation was announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of Title X, a government family planning program that serves about 4 million people.

The program currently subsidizes health centers such as those run by the non-profit Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception, health screenings and abortions. Planned Parenthood serves about 41 percent of Title X patients and receives up to $60 million a year in federal funds for family planning services.

To continue receiving taxpayer subsidies under the program, health clinics will have to comply with the new rule. Its key elements include “prohibiting referral for abortion as a method of family planning,” the health department said in a statement, adding that the rule “eliminates the requirement that Title X providers offer abortion counseling and referral.”

The rule would also require “clear financial and physical separation between Title X funded projects and programs or facilities where abortion is a method of family planning,” the statement said. The law already bans recipients of Title X funds from using those funds to perform abortions.

Conservative groups praised the administration’s move. “We thank President Trump for taking decisive action to disentangle taxpayers from the big abortion industry led by Planned Parenthood,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List.

But officials from the states of New York and California immediately began talking about going to court. “We will take legal action,” New York’s Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “These new rules are dangerous and unnecessary, and will prevent millions of Americans from obtaining the care they need and deserve.”

Planned Parenthood’s president, Leana Wen, called the new rule “unconscionable and unethical.”

“This rule compromises the oath that I took to serve patients and help them with making the best decision for their own health,” Wen said in a statement. “Patients expect their doctors to speak honestly with them, to answer their questions, to help them in their time of need.”

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Aditional reporting by Julian Mincer; Editing by Tom Brown)

Most children, parents separated at U.S.-Mexican border reunited: court filing

After being reunited with her daughter, Sandra Elizabeth Sanchez, of Honduras, speaks with media at Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – About 1,400 children of some 2,500 separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border have been reunited with their families, the U.S. government said in a court filing on Thursday.

Government lawyers said 711 other children were not eligible for reunification with their parents by Thursday’s deadline, which was set by a federal judge in San Diego. In 431 of these cases, the families could not be reunited because the parents were no longer in the United States.

The parents and children were separated as part of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigration. Many of them had crossed the border illegally, while others had sought asylum at a border crossing.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case against the government, said in Thursday’s court filing that data showed “dozens of separated children still have not been matched to a parent.”

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt accused the government in a statement of “picking and choosing who is eligible for reunification” and said it would “hold the government accountable and get these families back together.”

In a call with journalists after the court filing, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Chris Meekins said it was awaiting guidance from the court about how to proceed with the children of 431 parents no longer in the United States. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is an agency of department.

The government did not say in the call or in its court filing how many of those parents were deported.

One immigrant, Douglas Almendarez, told Reuters he believed that returning to Honduras was the only way to be reunited with his 11-year-old son.

“They told me: ‘He’s ahead of you’,” said Almendarez, 37, in the overgrown backyard of his modest soda shop several hours drive from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. “It was a lie.”

The ACLU said the government has not yet provided it with information about the reunifications of children aged 5-17 with their parents, including the location and timing of them.

“This information is critical both to ensure that these reunifications have in fact taken place, and to enable class counsel to arrange for legal and other services for the reunited families,’ it said.

LOST IN ‘BLACK HOLE’

Immigration advocates said the government’s push to meet the court’s deadline to reunite families was marred by confusion, and one said children had disappeared into a “black hole.”

Maria Odom, vice president of legal services for Kids in Need of Defense, said two children the group represented were sent from New York to Texas to be reunited with their mother. When they arrived, they learned their mother had already been deported, Odom told reporters during a conference call.

Odom said her group does not know where the children, aged 9 and 14, have been taken.

It was an example, she said, “of how impossible it is to track these children once they are placed in the black hole of reunification.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An outcry at home and abroad forced U.S. President Donald Trump to order a halt to the separations in June. U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and set Thursday as the deadline.

Sabraw has criticized some aspects of the process, but in recent days, he has praised government efforts.

The ACLU and government lawyers will return to court on Friday to discuss how to proceed.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del.; additional reporting by Loren Elliott in McAllen, Texas, Nate Raymond in Boston and Callaghan O’Hare in San Antonio; writing by Bill Tarrant; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. charges hundreds in major healthcare fraud, opioid crackdown

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addresses a news conference to announce a nation-wide health care fraud and opioid enforcement action, at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S. June 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced charges against 601 people including doctors for taking part in healthcare frauds that resulted in over $2 billion in losses and contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic in some cases.

The arrests came as part of what the department said was the largest healthcare fraud takedown in U.S. history and included 162 doctors and other suspects charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing addictive opioid painkillers.

“Some of our most trusted medical professionals look at their patients – vulnerable people suffering from addiction – and they see dollar signs,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

The arrests came as part of an annual fraud takedown overseen by the Justice Department. The crackdown resulted in authorities bringing dozens of unrelated cases involving alleged frauds that cost government healthcare programs and insurers more than $2 billion.

Officials sought in the latest crackdown to emphasize their efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the epidemic caused more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in the United States in 2016.

In a report released on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said about 460,000 patients covered by Medicare received high amounts of opioids in 2017 and 71,000 were at risk of misuse or overdose.

Those figures were slightly down from 2016, but the report said the high level of opioid use remained a concern. The report said almost 300 prescribers had “questionable prescribing” that warranted further scrutiny.

Many of the criminal cases announced on Thursday involved charges against medical professionals who authorities said had contributed to the country’s opioid epidemic by participating in the unlawful distribution of prescription painkillers.

The cases included charges in Texas against a pharmacy chain owner and two other people accused of using fraudulent prescriptions to fill bulk orders for over 1 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills that were sold to drug couriers.

“The perpetrators really are despicable and greedy people,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a press conference.

The Justice Department also announced other cases unrelated to opioids, including schemes to bill the government healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare as well as private insurers for medically unnecessary prescription drugs and compounded medications.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)