Clearance of Senhance Surgical System for General Surgery in the United States will open up Senhance to the highest volume and value procedures.
Consider FDA clearance is typically expected within 6 months for filing, and TransEnterix announced filing on 4-Aug-2020. If on schedule news may pop any day prior to 4-Feb-2021, or check for decision in the FDA database found here: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfpmn/pmn.cfm (just plug TransEnterix into the Applicant Name field).
FDA approval will fit perfectly with what looks like a potential peak in "US Currently Hospitalized with COVID-19" per data compiled by The COVID Tracking Project: https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized
These comments and snapshot on their Twitter site are encouraging. "On a national level, it appears COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the decline. Note: there are still some jurisdictions experiencing an overwhelming amount of hospitalizations." and "Some encouraging news: the 7-day averages for cases are declining in all 4 regions."
https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/status/1350243251987513344/photo/1
*see trend in the blue bars that indicate Currently Hospitalized Fell
The opportunities to apply Senhance will increase as hospitalizations & ICU occupancies fall. In 2010 the average ICU Occupancy was 67% according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Various states are reacting to ICU figures >70% as it represents a strain on hospitals.
Hospital staff are among the first to receive vaccinations; that's a great start.
The population most at risk (and contributing to increasing hospitalizations) is also among the first to be vaccinated. Vaccinating those > age 65 it ought to reduce ICU occupancy quite a bit, clearing the path to address the huge surgical backlog and adopt the Senhance Surgical System.
Last link is this excellent vaccination tracker on Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
A possible inflection point or precipitous drop in COVID hospitalizations in the U.S., may occur once most of the >65 age bracket are vaccinated. Gauge the figures presented on Bloomberg's Covid vaccine tracker against the U.S. population demographics to determine the theoretical inflection point (date).
US demographics on Wiki show 65 and over at 13% of the population per the 2010 Census.
Current population estimate is 330,052,960 (2020) * 13% = 42,906,885 or ~43 million >65.
| Under 18 years | 24.0% (2010)[4] |
| 18–44 years | 36.5% (2010)[4] |
| 45–64 years | 26.4% (2010)[4] |
| 65 and over | 13.0% (2010)[4] |
Using the Bloomberg data as of today -- Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 13 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 844,387 doses per day were administered.
43M - 13M = 30M remaining among the most at risk population.
Expanded rollout will increase daily vaccinations towards 1M/day, perhaps 1.5M per day. That means all 65 million will be treated with at least their first dose by mid-February. If a new agressive variant does not overwhelm the recovery, we ought to see a nice drop in hospitalizations by March accompanied by an uptick in general surgeries.