"Matthew Bayliss, the director of the city’s new Pandemic Institute, says history shows that preparedness should be based on “expecting and rigorously planning for the expected” - FT, 02/2022
🤔
devex.com/news/what-will…
" The institute has been given a grant of £10 million ($14 million) by pharmaceutical company Innova Medical Group, which provided the tests used in Liverpool’s pilot project."
You remember Innova, right?
Date Issued: June 10, 2021
Stop Using Innova Medical Group SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Qualitative Test: FDA Safety Communication fda.gov/medical-device…
🤔
"A Pasadena startup got billions selling COVID tests. Then came questions " - LA Times, July 2021
archive.ph/2whpu
" Innova Medical Group moved into a luxury office building in Pasadena. The startup’s contract with the British government has been a boon"
" Innova Medical Group was founded by Charles Huang, a former Chinese auto executive who settled in the San Gabriel Valley and is no stranger to ambitious ventures — including separate efforts to help revive the storied British carmaker MG Rover ..
"In June, the U.S. FDA said it had “significant concerns” that Innova’s test could produce false results leading to serious illness or death. The agency urged the relatively few Americans who had received Innova’s product to “destroy the tests by placing them in the trash.” ..
"The warning followed an inspection earlier this year of Innova’s offices, where FDA officials found things in disarray.
Inside a storage room, government inspectors found 13 cartons of tests co-mingled with boxes of the product damaged or set to be destroyed with no markings
indicating which boxes were OK to ship, according to an FDA letter sent to the company. Tests had been shipped with the wrong instructions, the inspectors found. And Innova had not inspected or otherwise verified its tests after receiving them from its manufacturer in China.
"The decision by the U.K. government to buy the antigen tests in massive quantities from the Pasadena startup was rooted in the desire by Johnson’s government to reopen the economy after shutdowns...
Uh huh 🙃🤡🤔
"Government and OXFORD UNIVERSITY scientists evaluated 40 tests and selected Innova’s for a pilot program based on the initial study. The tests are made by Xiamen Biotime Biotechnology Co., a company in Fujian province..." gov.uk/government/new…
"Dr. Tim Peto, an Oxford University scientist who led the initial government study, said Innova was chosen after its test “passed the threshold of performance” and it became clear the company could supply the test in large quantities. ..
"The startup has defenders in the public health sector, including Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has thrust himself into the U.K. debate..
"“I know people want to hate on the government for purchasing tests — but the Innova test is working entirely as expected,” Mina tweeted to his more than 100,000 followers.. “Very good for detecting contagious people. Which is the only goal here..
I’d be happy to write an OpEd for @guardian to explain.”"
Oh.
Innova has leveraged Mina’s advocacy. Its website links to an interview with Mina by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. headlined “Could quick COVID ‘antigen’ tests break the back of the pandemic?”
"Mina led a pilot program at Citibank in which bank employees in New York & Chicago checked themselves 3 times a week with Innova’s tests. In March, Innova hired away Sean Rogers, a Citibank executive who had worked on the pilot, to be its new chairman..
"The bank has since decided to use another antigen test that, unlike Innova’s, has been authorized by the FDA.
The British government, however, has continued to distribute the Innova tests despite the FDA action. ..
Chunhua Huang's Pasaca bio boasts of him “playing a key role in the strategic alliance” in 2002 between MG Rover Group and China’s Brilliance Group, a major commercial vehicle maker and the first Chinese company to go public on Wall Street..
"But the alliance fell apart and the parent of MG Rover filed for the British equivalent of bankruptcy in 2005 after Brilliance’s chairman, Yang Rong, fled to the U.S. following accusations by Chinese authorities of economic crimes. Huang was Brilliance’s finance director,
according to a British Parliamentary report that investigated the MG Rover failure..
"Huang retained his ties to Yeung, who resurfaced in 2009 telling Reuters in an interview from his Southern California home that he expected to build three multibillion-dollar plants that would make 3 million clean technology vehicles per year.. swissinfo.ch/ita/il-mondo-d…
"It’s unclear what led Huang to the import-export deal with the Chinese manufacturer Xiamen Biotime, .He was born in China, according to L.A. County voter registration records &served in the late 2000s as director of China equity research for BNP Paribas👀, according to a bio..
"A September news release on Xiamen Biotime’s website announcing the distribution agreement quotes Huang saying Innova had a “longstanding relationship with Biotime” but does not provide details...
"An Innova subsidiary and Pasaca Capital registered two Gulfstream jets early this year, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. One was a Gulfstream 650, among the top corporate jets on the market. A new Gulfstream 650 costs more than $60 million. ..
"In the San Gabriel Valley, 3 local real estate agents, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to nondisclosure agreements, said executives with the companies have been looking at estates in Pasadena, San Marino & Arcadia listed for anywhere from $3 million to $20 million
over the last year... In October, Innova President and Chief Executive Daniel Elliott shelled out $4.1 million for an 8,000-square-foot mansion in Arcadia. ..the 2-story showpiece includes 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, a sauna, wine cellar, movie theater and elevator.
Then in April, Weining Mao, president of the Charles Huang Foundation, paid $4.198 M for a .. estate near San Marino’s Lacy Park. The home ..comes with a swimming pool, spa, multiple entertaining areas and a bocce ball court set ..
"“Innova has supplied more than a billion rapid antigen tests to the world and will continue to supply to meet customer demand,” the spokeswoman said.
Such demand may help explain why company executives are flying around the world. Flight records ..
"for the older jet show it has flown to Iceland, Qatar, Cyprus, Israel and France. The records are unavailable for the G650..
🙄
Still, Huang may be hedging his bets. .. Pasaca has gone on something of an investment spree — &some of the companies don’t appear COVID-19-related.
"In March, Pasaca announced a $50-million investment in Caton Technology, a Singapore firm developing “next-generation IP network transport solutions.” ..
"And more recently, a new company appeared on the firm’s website. It’s a Rancho Santa Margarita company called Sweegen, described as providing “sweet taste solutions for multinational food and beverage manufacturers.”"
"'Rust' was not bonded...DelPiano, Souza and Baldwin’s manager, didn’t have an equity stake in Rust, ditto for his client Baldwin. ." deadline.com/2021/10/alec-b…
" Alec Baldwin and CAA agent Matt DelPiano attend CAA Sports Super Bowl Party presented By LG at Contemporary Arts Center on February 2, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage)"
CAA is the Creative Artists Agency, the biggest talent agency in Hollywood
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (Teachers') and Lego Group owners KIRKBI Invest A/S make EUR 500 million investment in ISS (International Service System) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_A/S
Charles Allen , Baron Allen of Kensington , was chief executive of Granada Group from 1996 to 2000 , chairman of the music company EMI,
"At the Festival dei Due Mondi (courtesy of R. Curi). In the photo: Charles III of England, Fabrizio Massimo Brancaccio, Barbara Massimo Borghese, Christiana Ravizza Canaletti Gaudenti"
"Aldo and Mila Brachetti Peretti di Tolentino are also linked to the Royal Family. In the 90s they hosted Princess Margaret, younger sister of the Queen, at the 'Casone' which belonged to the Parisani counts, for a short period of rest."
"On Oct. 22, he was one of a small group of experts on a Zoom call to advise the Biden administration to urgently ramp up testing by purchasing and sending Americans free tests.
But 3 weeks after that call.. Mina announced he was leaving academia to become an executive at eMed
"a startup that sells some of the most expensive rapid tests.
In doing so, he joins the list of covid authorities who are both frequently quoted experts on national pandemic policy and working for companies profiting from that advice.."..