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Walgreens pharmacies in seven states will soon offer drive-thru coronavirus testing stations. The nationwide retailer announced on Tuesday its partnership with Abbott Laboratories to offer rapid-result coronavirus tests for patients in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. The COVID-19 test produced by Abbott can deliver results in 13 minutes. In total, 15 stores will offer the testing services. Walgreens has yet to announce the exact locations for the drive-thru testing centers but noted that the company had been in talks with the Department of Health and Human Services to determine the best "hot spot" location for the centers...

...The Classic Learning test or CLT is not new. Founded in 2015 by Jeremy Tate, the test aims to “provide alternative standardized tests rooted in tradition and taking advantage of modern technologies,” according to the company’s website. Tate told The College Fix in an email that registration rate for the CLT exam had increased by 300 percent in the past week..The test derives its content from a broad range of authors and thinkers throughout history from religious and irreligious backgrounds alike..

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that improved coronavirus testing and tracing of infected people's contacts will help the country eventually be able to ease up on measures like stay at home orders. Fauci, a top official at the National Institutes of Health, said during a White House briefing that he would like to see enough capacity to test a wide range of people and the ability to determine who those that test positive have been in contact with. That would help create a targeted approach and allow the country to ease up on blunter efforts currently in place, like stay...

- The Abbott ID NOW™ COVID-19 test brings rapid testing to the front lines - Test to run on Abbott's point-of-care ID NOW platform - a portable instrument that can be deployed where testing is needed most - ID NOW has the largest molecular point-of-care installed base in the U.S. and is available in a wide range of healthcare settings - Abbott will be making ID NOW COVID-19 tests available next week and expects to ramp up manufacturing to deliver 50,000 tests per day - This is the company's second test to receive Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA for...

T This past Thursday, Donald Trump visited the National Response Coordination Center for a teleconference with the nation’s governors about how to handle the covid-19 pandemic. The center, which is situated inside the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, in Washington, is designed, in the agency’s words, to coördinate “the overall Federal support for major incidents and emergencies.” Trump—along with Mike Pence, and several other Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials—sat around a table in a gray-walled conference room, while the governors were patched in from around the country. The governors said their states needed personal protective equipment (P.P.E.) for health-care...

Doctor, former Kansas governor says coronavirus patients 'doing better' in testing with anti-malaria drug Dr. Jeff Colyer on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 President Trump calls the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine a ‘game changer’ in treating the coronavirus; reaction and analysis from former Kansas governor, practicing surgeon Dr. Jeff Colyer. Anti-malaria drugs ike hydroxychloroquine -- which are being used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients -- are showing positive results, former Kansas governor and practicing surgeon Dr. Jeff Colyer said Wednesday. Appearing on "America's Newsroom" with host Ed Henry, Colyer said that data from testing at the University of Kansas...

........... But in the fact-challenged world of the coronavirus COVID-19, there are still actual facts out there, and Fox News analyst hit a homer with a single post on Twitter. “As the number of cases has expanded, the mortality rate has declined. It will likely decline even further if and when those without symptoms can be diagnosed and counted,” Hume tweeted. He included a tweet from another Twitter user that laid out the death rate in the U.S. from COVID-19. 4.06% March 8 (22 deaths of 541 cases) 3.69% March 9 (26 of 704) 3.01% March 10 (30 of 994)...

Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested Tuesday that he is keeping a running list of potential vice presidential picks that includes more than a dozen women. "There is a short list meaning somewhere between — there's about 12 and 15 women who I think would be qualified to be president tomorrow," Biden said during an appearance on ABC's "The View." "I think we're going to narrow to 11," he added. "We're going to start vetting soon." "We are going to start vetting soon and there is a shortlist," Joe Biden tells @TheView on female VP picks, adding they plan to...

The Lagos State government on Friday disclosed that following the announcement by President Donald Trump on Thursday that chloroquine can cure coronavirus, hospitals in the state has received patients suffering from chloroquine poisoning. This was just as the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) told Nigerians to desist from self-medication over the coronavirus as the World Health Organisation (WHO) has not approved chloroquine for the management of coronavirus.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first coronavirus diagnostic test that can be conducted entirely at the point of care. The test from California-based Cepheid will deliver results in about 45 minutes – much faster than current tests that require a sample to be sent to a centralized lab, where results can take days. The test has been designed to operate on any of Cepheid's more than 23,000 automated GeneXpert Systems worldwide, of which 5,000 are in the U.S., the company said. The systems are already being used to test for conditions like HIV or tuberculosis. The...

Pilot run by Google subsidiary Verily offers process toward tests in Santa Clara and San Mateo countiesA pilot Web site intended to offer COVID-19 risk screening and testing for high-risk individuals set to go live Monday, launched Sunday evening. The site is limited to residents of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Participants must be U.S. residents, be 18 or older, speak and read English and be willing to sign a COVID-19 Public Health authorization form. Information on a screening site at Project Baseline, an online health-information platform run by Google subsidiary Verily, said it was “working to deliver COVID-19...

Thread #16 is below and it ran for two days... http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3824270/posts?page=2051

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SUBJECT: Expanding State-Approved Diagnostic Tests By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: It is the policy of the United States to take proactive measures to prepare for and respond to public health threats, including the public health emergency involving Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was declared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the “Secretary”) on January 31, 2020, pursuant to section 319 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C....

America has failed to meet the capacity for coronavirus testing that it needs, a top public health official publicly acknowledged Thursday. "The system is not really geared to what we need right now," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a House hearing about coronavirus test kits in the United States, which were initially dogged by technical glitches. "That is a failing. Let's admit it." Fauci was responding to a question from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, who asked about a claim by trade organization National Nurses United alleging that "countless" health...

Pierce County Readiness Center Tacoma, Washington 5:48 P.M. PST GOVERNOR INSLEE: Welcome to Washington State. We’ve just finished very productive meetings with the Vice President. We in Washington are very appreciative of him being here today. He not only helped us with some issues today in our partnership with the federal government, but he has already helped us in recently removing some federal restrictions that would have made it more difficult to have testing for the coronavirus, which we appreciate. We had very helpful meetings, talking about our ability to increasing the testing capacity for the virus in the United...

A person in San Antonio, Texas, who had previously tested negative twice for the coronavirus, and was released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is now back in quarantine after a subsequent test came back positive. The individual, who was evacuated from Wuhan, China, to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on a flight chartered by the State Department was released from the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, according to San Antonio's Mayor.

Some states received test kits that were inconclusive or only partially accurate. Other states said they were hamstrung by testing criteria so narrow, it limited who they could screen for the new coronavirus. For more than a month, officials throughout the country have been asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to enable more widespread testing for the never-before-seen infection, as coronavirus cases around the globe rose past 82,000. But technical difficulties reduced the number of laboratories in the U.S. with working test kits to only about a dozen, including CDC headquarters in Atlanta. That delayed results for suspected...

The state health department hopes to detect cases earlier and prevent the disease from spreading. Illinois is the first state to do in-state testing for novel coronavirus. The Illinois Department of Public Health said test results are typically available within 24 hours for specimens arriving at the department's Chicago laboratory, the agency said in a statement. IDPH is also working on bringing testing to Springfield and Carbondale. “The ability to do this testing will mean we will be able to detect any new cases of novel coronavirus earlier and prevent any possible spread,” IDPH Assistant Director Evonda Thomas-Smith said in...

The first-ever highway partially made of reclaimed plastic was inaugurated in Mexico on Nov. 13. The 2.5-mile stretch of highway in the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico used 1.7 tons of recycled plastic, or the equivalent of 425,000 plastic packaging units, according to Dow Plastics Technology Mexico. "The advantage of using recycled plastic products is that they can be used on all types of highways, not only in high-performance products, which can extend the life span of any paved road," Paula Sans, Dow Mexico's director of packaging and specialty plastics, said in a release. The newly paved stretch of...

Both Princeton University and Brown University have announced that many graduate and doctoral programs will no longer require applicants to submit the traditionally required GRE standardized test scores.Reasoning for the change focuses around increasing the "diversity" of the student body and the “biased” nature of standardized testing. Two Ivy League universities have announced that many graduate programs will no longer require the traditional standardized Graduate Records Examination testing requirements for applications, citing reasons pertaining to "diversity" and concerns that such tests are "biased" against minority and low-income students.Both Princeton University and Brown University recently announced that they are moving...