• 3D-Printer Owners Rally to Create NHS Face Masks

    Some 1,400 3D-printer owners have pledged to use their machines to help make face shields for the NHS.
    The BBC reports that the 3DCrowd UK group was started by palliative-medicine doctor James Coxon, and is now looking to recruit more volunteers.
    It says thousands of its 3D-printed masks have already been made and donated to hospitals, GPs, pharmacies, paramedics and social-care practices.
    Healthcare workers say they are having to put themselves at risk because of a lack of personal protective equipment.
    “We are basically asking all the people around the country with 3D printers to join our project to create face shields for hospitals and other health workers,” said Gen Ashley from 3DCrowd UK.

     

  • U.S. Braces for Tough COVID-19 Week; Deaths Drop in Parts of Europe

    Top U.S. health officials yesterday warned that the nation is in for a tough week ahead with more COVID-19 cases and deaths, as activity in some European countries—including some of world’s main hot spots—showed more signs of slowing. As of Sunday afternoon, the U.S. total is at 331,151 cases, including about 9,500 deaths. Globally, the total passed 1,270,000 from 183 countries, including 69,082 deaths.

  • Britain Has Millions of Coronavirus Antibody Tests, but They Don’t Work

    None of the antibody tests ordered by the U.K. government is good enough to use, the new testing chief has admitted.
    John Newton said that tests ordered from China were able to identify immunity accurately only in people who had been severely ill and that Britain was no longer hoping to buy millions of kits off the shelf.
    hris Smyth, Dominic Kennedy, and Billy Kenber write in The Times that instead, government scientists hope to work with companies to improve the performance of antibody tests. Professor Newton said he was “optimistic” that one would come good in months.
    However, Dame Deirdre Hine, the public health expert who chaired an official review that criticized failures of modelling in the 2009 swine flu pandemic, said that it was “difficult to understand” why the government had not planned for more testing.
    The scientist tasked with evaluating the antibody tests for the government said that it would be at least a month until one was good enough to offer to millions of people.

  • OxVent Gets Green Light by U.K. Government to Proceed to Next Stage of Testing

    It was announced last night that Oxvent team has been shortlisted by the U.K. government to go to the next stage of testing for safety and usability of the company’s ventilator prototype. This is following the government’s recent callout for rapidly deployable ventilator designs in response to the Coronavirus pandemic and forecasted acute shortage of ventilators.
    Oxvent says that this green light enables the company to test the prototype ventilators. If the ventilator then passes the required MHRA safety tests, it will rapidly move into production with the medical manufacturing company, Smith and Nephew (S&N) based in Hull.
    After manufacture it would be deployed through the NHS. “Our design could also be used in other healthcare settings,” Oxvent says.

  • When What-If Scenarios Turn Real: COVID-19 Insights from Pandemic Modelers

    As a Yale University postdoctoral researcher, economist Jude Bayham studied the potential consequences of a global pandemic that could shutter schools, close businesses, and strain hospitals. That was back in 2013. Now, as the world grapples with the coronavirus, the Colorado State University economist and a multi-institutional team are turning those prescient modeling exercises into real insights for policymakers.

  • COVID-19 Misinformation Attributed to Johns Hopkins Circulates Widely Online

    Misinformation about COVID-19 purporting to come from Johns Hopkins is circulating widely online, including one particular message described as an “excellent summary” that has been shared extensively worldwide in the past few weeks. The message has no identifiable connection to Johns Hopkins. “Rumors and misinformation like this can easily circulate in communities during a crisis. The rumors that we have seen in greater volumes are those citing a Johns Hopkins immunologist and infectious disease expert. We do not know the origin of these rumors and they lack credibility,” Johns Hopkins said.

  • “CoronaCheck” Website Combats Spread of Misinformation

    Researchers have developed an automated system that uses machine learning, data analysis, and human feedback to automatically verify statistical claims about the new coronavirus. “CoronaCheck,” based on ongoing research from Cornell University’s Immanuel Trummer, launched internationally in March and has already been used more than 9,600 times. The database – now available in English, French, and Italian – checks claims on COVID-19’s spread based on reliable sources such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Pandemics Can Fast Forward the Rise and Fall of Great Powers

    Fortunately for the United States, my research shows that democracies generally outperform their autocratic competitors in great power rivalries. Still, there is no time to lose. As U.S. leaders formulate their response to the coronavirus, they must think not only in terms of the immediate public health crisis, but also about the very future of American global leadership.

  • Trial Drug Can Significantly Block Early Stages of COVID-19 in Engineered Human Tissues

    An international team led by University of British Columbia researcher Dr. Josef Penninger has found a trial drug that effectively blocks the cellular door SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect its hosts.
    UBC says that the findings, published today in Cell, hold promise as a treatment capable of stopping early infection of the novel coronavirus that, as of April 2, has affected more than 981,000 people and claimed the lives of 50,000 people worldwide.
    The study provides new insights into key aspects of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and its interactions on a cellular level, as well as how the virus can infect blood vessels and kidneys.

  • BARDA, Department of Defense, and SAb Biotherapeutics to Partner to Develop a Novel COVID-19 Therapeutic

    A therapeutic to treat novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is moving forward in development through a partnership between the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the Department of Defense Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense (JPEO - CBRND), and SAb Biotherapeutics, Inc. (SAb), of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
    Using an interagency agreement with JPEO’s Medical CBRN Defense Consortium, BARDA transferred approximately $7.2 million in funding to (JPEO - CBRND) to support SAb to complete manufacturing and preclinical studies, with an option to conduct a Phase 1 clinical trial.
    The therapeutic, called SAB-185, is part of a new class of immunotherapies that relies on SAb’s platform technology to produce fully human polyclonal antibodies as the basis for the drug. This technology produces the antibodies without the need for blood donations from people who have recovered from the virus; this approach produces greater quantities of the drug than the traditional human antibody donor methods.

  • Resilient Teams: How Harvard Innovation Labs Ventures Are Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

    During a time when the world faces unprecedented challenges due to COVID-19, it’s more important than ever to share the stories of the innovators and entrepreneurs who are working tirelessly to keep people healthy and connected to each other.  Harvard says that many startups in the Harvard Innovation Labs Spring Venture Program are creating products and services that have the potential to reduce the spread of the virus, improve patient care, and create community when in person gatherings are not possible. We’ve also recently seen numerous examples of former ventures re-focusing their efforts on inspiring initiatives related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we’ve highlighted a few of the products and services that current and former Harvard Innovation Labs ventures are working on. In the coming weeks, we will update this post regularly as our ventures continue to respond and adapt to this global challenge. 

  • GSK, AstraZeneca in Talks to Help U.K. Government on Virus Tests

    U.K. pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline Plc and AstraZeneca Plc are in talks to set up a lab to explore new ways of testing for the coronavirus to help overcome shortages of diagnostic materials, according to a person with knowledge of the plans.
    Suzi Ring and James Paton write in Bloomberg that the drugmakers will evaluate the use of different raw materials needed to carry out the tests and use their know-how and resources to help other companies or the U.K.’s National Health Service increase production, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the details of the discussions aren’t yet public.
    U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock pledged Thursday to increase coronavirus testing to 100,000 a day by the end of April. 

     

  • Coronavirus: China Floods Europe With Defective Medical Equipment

    As the coronavirus rages across Europe, a growing number of countries are reporting that millions of pieces of medical equipment donated by, or purchased from, China to defeat the pandemic are defective and unusable. Soeren Kern writes for the Gatestone Institute that the revelations are fueling distrust of a public relations effort by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party to portray China as the world’s new humanitarian superpower. Two examples: In Spain, the Ministry of Health revealed that 640,000 coronavirus tests that it had purchased from a Chinese supplier were defective. In addition, a further million coronavirus tests delivered to Spain on March 30 by another Chinese manufacturer were also defective. The Czech news site iRozhlas reported that 300,000 coronavirus test kits delivered by China had an error rate of 80 percent. The Czech Ministry of Interior had paid $2.1 million for the kits.

  • These Drugs Don’t Target the Coronavirus—They Target Us

    In another example of the blinding speed at which science is moving during the pandemic era, researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark will start a clinical trial of a drug named camostat mesylate tomorrow—barely 1 month after a Cell paper showed the compound can prevent the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, from entering human cells.
    Kai Kupferschmidt writes in Science that one reason the Danish researchers can act so fast is that camostat mesylate is already licensed in Japan and South Korea to treat pancreatitis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the pancreas. Enough safety data were available to convince an ethical panel to greenlight the trial.
    The trial also illustrates a new approach to combatting the virus. Thousands of researchers around the world are investigating existing drugs as potential therapies for COVID-19, most of them looking at antivirals, such as remdesivir, developed to treat Ebola, or Kaletra, a combination drug against HIV. But Nevan Krogan, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, sees another opportunity: “The virus can’t live by itself, right? It needs our genes and proteins in order to live and to replicate.” Camostat mesylate is one of several candidate drugs that block those interactions. They don’t target the virus, but us, the host.

  • How the Coronavirus Pandemic Is Killing Cash

    There is much talk about how COVID-19 will change the world. There is less about how it is simply accelerating trends that were already underway. Merryn Somerset Webb writes in MoneyWeek that one to keep a particular eye on is a theme we have been watching for some time – the death of cash.
    No one wants to touch cash today. It’s always been known to be pretty filthy stuff; now it isn’t just grubby, it is potentially lethal. No wonder, then, that the use of cash has halved in the last week and that “card only” signs are appearing everywhere. Some large chains stopped taking card payments altogether (even before lockdown) and the contactless upper limit has been moved from £30 to £45.