 | FRI, FEB 07, 2020 | | | | Ancestry layoffs | Coronavirus pushes China to isolation | | | | Think a friend or colleague should be getting this newsletter? Share this link with them to sign up.
The coronavirus outbreak worsened this week, with cases reaching more than 28,000 worldwide by Thursday with at least 565 deaths. World health officials are urging the public to remain calm even as the United States quarantines travelers from China's Hubei province. We have the latest from our team below.
CNBC's Chrissy Farr also has the scoop on layoffs at Ancestry, the largest seller of at-home DNA tests.
There's a lot this week in health care and pharma news. Keep submitting your thoughts if there's something you're curious about to CNBC Health Editor Dawn Kopecki at dawn.kopecki@nbcuni.com.
| | China grows more isolated as airlines cancel more than 46,000 flights | One by one, air carriers have cut service after demand fell sharply and governments took more drastic measures they say aim to contain the spread of the disease, leaving China increasingly isolated. Airlines in dozens of countries — from New Zealand to Finland to the United Arab Emirates — have scaled back service or in the case of U.S. airlines canceled flights altogether to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong as the coronavirus spreads.
-Leslie Josephs | | | | Testing for coronavirus takes center stage as vaccines, drugs will take time | With public health experts warning the U.S. may see outbreaks of the coronavirus, calls for broader testing capabilities abound. The government took a step forward this week when the FDA gave emergency use authorization for the CDC to distribute its test to state labs – but it will take commercial companies to expand testing even further. Qiagen's CEO told us on our nightly special that the company expects to have a test ready within a month, and the FDA said it had sent information to 35 diagnostics developers. Meanwhile, headlines keep flying on vaccine and drug candidates, with (tentatively) good news on Gilead's remdesivir: it was used to treat the first U.S. patient with 2019-nCoV, with promising results … but one patient is far from enough to know a drug works. Gilead is sending enough medicine for 500 patients to be tested in clinical trials in Wuhan.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | Both 23andMe and Ancestry cut 100 jobs, citing the slowdown of the consumer DNA market | Ancestry laid off 100 employees this week, just weeks after 23andMe made the decision to cut jobs. Both companies, which sell DNA tests to consumers, acknowledged that there's been a slowdown with the market. Industry experts suggest that one big reason could be increasing privacy concerns, and another is simply that everyone who was interested in these tests already got one. Both companies see a future in focusing more on health tests, and less on genealogy.
-Chrissy Farr | | | | Researchers say the coronavirus may be more contagious than current data shows | Infectious disease specialists and scientists say the coronavirus may be more contagious than current data shows. Emerging in Wuhan about a month ago, the virus has spread from about 300 people as of Jan. 21 to more than 28,000. Researchers estimate the so-called R naught of the disease, a mathematical equation that shows how many people will get sick from each infected person, is around 2.2. That's higher than the seasonal flu but lower than SARS. However, the virus' current transmission rate may be underestimated by officials who currently have very limited data, including possibly unreported mild cases of the disease, said Yanzhong Huang, a public health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | Princess Cruises quarantined 3,700 on ship after 20 tested positive for coronavirus | Carnival's Princess Cruises said Tuesday it had placed 3,700 passengers and crew under mandatory quarantine for two weeks after 10 people aboard the cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, tested positive for the new coronavirus. After testing more aboard the ship, a total of 20 people have tested positive for the virus as of Thursday. Those 20 include three from the U.S., two from Canada, one from New Zealand, one from Taiwan, two from Australia, seven from Japan, one from the Philippines and three from Hong Kong. All those infected with the virus are being transported off the ship to a local hospital, the company said, while those in quarantine remain confined to their cabins.
-Will Feuer | | | | Health care IPOs off to healthy start | While investors have been circumspect about some marquee name unicorn IPOs, the last two weeks have seen strong interested health care IPOs. Thursday saw drug research firm PPD become the year's biggest IPO, raising $1.6 billion, while biotech software platform developer Schrodinger saw its shares soar 68 percent in its debut.
-Bertha Coombs | | Healthy Returns: Investing in health care innovation
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Led by CNBC's anchors and reporters, Healthy Returns hones in on groundbreaking ideas that will transform the health care industry, cutting through the noise and weeding out the "sales pitch." | | Healthy Returns May 12, 2020
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