Medical personnel prone a COVID-19 patient last November at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. Jae C. Hong/AP hide caption
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Jae C. Hong/AP
The coronavirus pandemic appears to have shortened the average life expectancy in the United States, according to new research, and the impact is most dire for racial and ethnic minorities.
The deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced overall life expectancy by 1.13 years, according to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and Princeton University.
That would be the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in the past 40 years and cut U.S. life expectancy to 77.48 years — the lowest it’s been since 2003, the researchers say.
“This impact is about 10 times as large as the worrisome annual decreases several years ago that were attributed largely to drug overdoses, other external causes, and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases,” the researchers write in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The reduction in life expectancy is estimated to be even greater among racial and ethnic minorities. Life expectancy is estimated to fall by 2.10 years among Blacks and 3.05 years among Latinos. The decline would be 0.68 years among whites.
That would widen the gap in life expectancy between black and white populations from 3.6 years to more than five years, “thereby eliminating progress made in reducing this differential since 2006,” researchers write.
“The huge decline in life expectancy for Latinos is especially shocking given that Latinos have lower rates than the white and Black populations of most chronic conditions that are risk factors for COVID-19,” Noreen Goldman, a professor of demography and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, said in a statement.
“The generally good health of Latinos prior to the pandemic, which should have protected them from COVID-19, has laid bare the risks associated with social and economic disadvantage,” said Goldman, who helped conduct the study.
The pandemic has killed at least 389,000 people in the U.S., and could kill more than 566,000 by May, according to the latest estimate from researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. COVID-19 became the leading cause of death in the U.S. in December.
“The U.S. reduction in 2020 life expectancy is projected to exceed that of most other high-income countries, indicating that the United States — which already had a life expectancy below that of all other high income developed nations prior to the pandemic — will see its life expectancy fall even farther behind its peers,” the researchers write.
An outgoing high official told NPR that Israel has a public health imperative to protect all Palestinians from COVID-19, plus a humanitarian obligation.
About a year ago the country’s domestic intelligence agency began monitoring Israelis’ movements through cellular phone location data, leading critics to say it was spying on its own citizens.
Johnson & Johnson has started shipping its first vaccine doses across the U.S., adding a third vaccine to the country’s arsenal as public health officials warn of an uptick in cases.
In recent years, the way businesses operate and how consumers buy and consume has faced many changes. The current reality has made thousands of offices unnecessary by replacing them with work from home, at the same time the development of the so-called work remotely has undergone drastic development. Of course, when embracing remote work there are many tools and technologies that have made it easier to adopt in this new reality.
As is a quite evident day by day, the current market environment forces businesses to continue to find and use innovative solutions to cope with these difficult conditions. Now, more than ever, Remote Assistance and Augmented Reality /AR are the key to business continuity and are playing an important role in fostering future business growth. Given that the transformation that has taken place has centered on technology, then many businesses have also focused on AR technology as a way to increase productivity and create an interconnected interaction between the workforce.
Already accepting AR technology many businesses have at their disposal many tools and platforms to continue remote service operations. We can mention here VSight Remote, which despite the impact the pandemic has had, continues to provide sustainable solutions by turning remote assistance into an essential tool for avoiding operational outages on the ground.
The following points highlight how businesses can use AR Remote Assistance to continue operations, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic but also further, considering the positive and long-term impact that this technology makes possible.
1. An unexpected problem requires an immediate solution.
Many businesses not only produce and sell but at the same time have to maintain specialized equipment belonging to the industrial sector where they operate. As the distribution of workforce varies in locations around the world, there is a need to reduce site visits — including pre-installation visits. To reduce reliance on site visits, businesses through AR Remote Assistance enable the headquarter workforce to interact at a distance with site workers and improve efficiency by being able to solve problems encountered quickly — without the need to make a trip towards the location of the problem. In this way businesses do not waste time but continue to work normally, finding the right solutions thanks to Remote Assistance.
2. Distribution of knowledge at a distance but with the same efficiency.
Another goal that businesses aim to keep in check at all times is the quality of service they provide. Not only in the expert-site worker connection but also in the one between the expert and the customers, it is important that the distance support is provided at the right time and in high quality. Now through Remote Assistance site workers especially gain from the extraordinary benefits by receiving the guidance of headquarter experts who make it possible to disseminate knowledge in real-time. Businesses using Remote Assistance make it possible for their experienced experts to be anywhere, right away. This means a greater engagement on the part of site workers. In addition, integrating remote assistance into their wearable devices, such as smart glasses facilitate the freedom of action during the performance of various tasks. Remote Assistance solution is seen as a valuable way not only for knowledge transfer but also for faster and more efficient employee training.
3. Fast cooperation worldwide.
The Remote Assistance solution offers ease of use by connecting the workforce worldwide. As mentioned above, site employees can now take advantage of the opportunity to successfully perform their tasks hands-free. Experts can now interact in real-time with site workers and at the same time interact in the same documents or images, using AR annotations and even adding 3D models to the live video streaming environment. With the help of remote collaboration, the time to perform all these operations is faster and does not require numerous manuals that are often quite distracting.
4. Create long-term and efficient solutions for the future of the business.
Successfully adopting AR-based Remote Assistance is a step towards ensuring business continuity not only during this global pandemic. The wide potential of this Remote Assistance is quite favorable to be used further by businesses for a longer period. All of this may be feasible given the fact that this technology makes it possible for businesses to reap the benefits that are quite valuable. Some of these benefits, as touched on above, are to facilitate remote maintenance inspections, improve remote collaboration, reduce the number of technicians deployed on the site, and facilitate the way the workforce performs its tasks.
Businesses that have adopted Remote Assistance and Augmented Reality prove how they can benefit from them by facilitating the operating processes between the trio of actors expert-technician and customer. This AR Remote Assistance has long-term benefits that enable significant business growth and the need to ensure business continuity is seen as a much-needed reason to start utilizing it.