• We Were Warned

    When, inevitably, an investigative commission will be set up to investigate the government’s response to COVID-19 crisis, it will conclude that signs of a coming crisis were everywhere. Uri Friedman writes that President Donald Trump has referred to the coronavirus outbreak as “an unforeseen problem,” as “something that nobody expected,” and as a crisis that “came out of nowhere,” but as is so often the case with Trump, he was not telling the truth. In fact, the investigative commission will conclude that the warning lights were blinking red for years, within the government and outside the government. Despite the warning lights, the voluminous studies, and the alarming reports from the U.S. intelligence community, the U.S. government was not sufficiently prepared when the virus SARS-CoV-2, finally came calling.

  • WHO Launches Global Megatrial of the Four Most Promising Coronavirus Treatments

    Could any drugs already in use against various diseases hold the key to saving COVID-19 patients from serious harm or death? Science reports that on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a large global trial, called SOLIDARITY, to test these drugs: A drug combo already used against HIV; a malaria treatment first tested during World War II; and a new antiviral whose promise against Ebola fizzled last year. The drugs being tested are: Remdesivir; Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine; Ritonavir/lopinavir; and Ritonavir/lopinavir and interferon-beta.

  • Covid-19: Gilead Pauses Access to Experimental Drug Due to “Overwhelming” Demand

    Foster City, California-based Gilead Sciences said it has temporarily stopped granting patients access — with some exceptions — to remdesivir, the company’s experimental drug against the coronavirus which causes COVID-19. STAT reports that the company cited “overwhelming demand” as the reasons for the temporary suspension.

  • FDA Warns of “Unauthorized” COVID-19 Tests

    The FDA warns that new that at-home COVID-19 tests are “unauthorized.” STAT reports that several startups selling the kits insist they are allowed to sell the tests under new, looser government rules aiming to expand testing for COVID-19.

  • Fast COVID-19 Test to Be Limited to Hospitals

    Sunnyvale, California-based Cepheid has a new diagnostic test for the coronavirus – a test which returns results in just 45 minutes, four times faster than existing systems. Techcrunch reports, however, that the test, which was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration last week,  will not materially affect the number of tests experts say are needed because it will likely be used only in the most urgent situations: triaging patients who are already in the hospital or the emergency room, and testing health care workers who might be infected to see whether they can return to work.

  • National Guard Deployed in 3 States as U.S. COVID-19 Cases Pass 33,000

    President Trump yesterday announced he has activated the National Guard for three hard-hit states, and Ohio and Louisiana yesterday became the latest states to issue mandatory shelter-in-place orders, as the number of COVID-19 infections in the United States soared past 33,000. Meanwhile, an increasing number of infections and exposures have been reported in lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. And surges continue in western Europe, with disease activity picking up pace in some African countries, lifting the global total yesterday to 335,957 in 171 countries, 14,632 of them fatal.

  • South Korea’s Coronavirus Plan Is Working, Can the World Copy It?

    To fight the COVID-19 epidemic, the South Korean government has taken drastic, even extreme, measures: Government health agencies send citizens phone alerts – at times, a dozen a day – about new infections in their neighborhoods; health officials conduct thousands of in-person interviews with those suspected of being infected; and the government has instant access to extensive amounts of personal information —  such as bank records, phone GPS data, and surveillance footage — not only for confirmed coronavirus patients but also suspected cases. This access is possible because South Korean lawmakers loosened privacy laws following a 2015 outbreak of MERS. It is not clear that citizens in Western countries would be comfortable with this intrusive approach.

  • Using Machine Learning to Discover Coronavirus Treatments

    Conducting antibody discovery in a laboratory typically takes years, but it takes just a week for the algorithms developed by two graduates of Columbia University’s Data Science Institute – algorithms capable of computationally generating, screening, and optimizing hundreds of millions of therapeutic antibodies — to identify antibodies that can fight against the virus. Expediting the development of a treatment that could help infected people is critical.

  • Italian COVID-19 Deaths Pass China's Total; Cases Surge in Europe

    With reports of 427 more deaths reported yesterday, Italy’s fatality count has now passed China’s, as case numbers continued to surge across much of Europe and the disease makes inroads on other continents, including Africa and the Americas. In other key developments, China yesterday had no new locally acquired cases, though it did report several imported infections, and a research team from China reported disappointing early findings for a widely available HIV drug combo (lopinavir-ritonavir) for treating hospitalized patients.

  • COVID-19 Treatment Might Already Exist in Old Drugs – We’re Using Pieces of the Coronavirus Itself to Find Them

    As a systems biologist who studies how cells are affected by viruses during infections, I’m interested in the question how long will it take to develop drugs to treat COVID-19. Finding points of vulnerability and developing a drug to treat a disease typically takes years. But the new coronavirus isn’t giving the world that kind of time. With most of the world on lockdown and the looming threat of millions of deaths, researchers need to find an effective drug much faster.

  • Coronavirus Testing Kits to Be Developed Using New RNA Imaging Technology

    Simon Fraser University researchers will use their pioneering imaging technology—called Mango, for its bright colour— to develop coronavirus testing kits. They’re among a small set of Canadian researchers who responded to the rapid funding opportunity recently announced by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to help address COVID-19.

  • Where Is Helmut Schmidt When We Need Him?

    Helmut Schmidt came to the attention of Germans, and Europeans, in February 1962, when he competently and effectively managed the crisis which followed the massive flood which inundated the city of Hamburg. His determined, unbureaucratic, and effective management of the crisis earned him the reputation of a Macher — someone who gets things done regardless of obstacles. This reputation carried him all the way to the chancellorship (1974-1982). He was a competent, low-key, trustworthy straight shooter who told it like it is. Someone who offered a calm, steady, and reassuring leadership in trying times. A pair of safe hands in a time of crisis. On Wednesday, the title of an editorial in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung told us something about the mood, and yearnings, in Germany – and around the world: “Wer ist heute der Helmut Schmidt?” (Who Is Today’s Helmut Schmidt?).

     

  • Experts: Russia Using Virus Crisis to Sow Discord in West

    Experts say that Kremlin’s disinformation specialists are behind a disinformation campaign in the Western media on coronavirus, intended to fuel panic and discord among allies, deepen the crisis, exacerbate its consequences, and hamper the ability of Western democracies to respond to it effectively. The European Union has accused Moscow of pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, using “contradictory, confusing and malicious reports” to make it harder for the bloc leaders to communicate its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Truth Decay in the Coronavirus Moment: Q&A with Jennifer Kavanagh

    The COVID-19 crisis “is the type of environment in which false and misleading information thrives and spreads quickly. People are vulnerable. People are afraid. People don’t know what to believe. Trust in basically every organization or position that we would turn to is pretty low. There’s higher trust in the medical community than in, say, media or government, but it’s still not all that high. The combination of low trust and high volume of information coming from people who are not experts—but purport to be experts—creates the perfect storm for the average person,” says Jennifer Kavanagh, author of Truth Decay.

  • Modeling Study Suggests 18 Months of COVID-19 Social Distancing, Much Disruption

    On 16 March, when White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, MD, stood beside President Donald Trump and announced the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” campaign, she said guidance on home isolation was informed by the latest models from the United Kingdom. Birx was likely referring to a new modeling study by Imperial College of London epidemiologists on likely U.S. and U.K. outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The model, which has been lauded by epidemiologists around the world, analyzes the two approaches to managing the virus – mitigation vs suppression.