• Race against Time: The Complex Task of Developing a Vaccine against the New Coronavirus

    University of Munich virologist Gerd Sutter talks about the complex task of developing a vaccine against the new coronavirus – and the approach he has adopted, which is already being tested against the related coronavirus MERS. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 40 projects are already underway with the aim of producing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Sutter’s comments: “Yes, a lot of things are now happening. Among them are projects which, like ours, are inspired by the protective effects of the MERS vaccine, but other vector-based approaches are also being tried. Then there is a whole series of projects that involve the use of nucleic acids, such as those being pursued by Moderna or by CureVac in Tübingen. At this point, it’s important to make use of all available technologies. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said that we would be very pleased if it took less than 2 to 3 years to get from the discovery of a new virus to a Phase-I trial of a new vaccine. Now, we can probably reckon with a year or thereabouts.”

  • FDA Issues Emergency Authorization of Anti-Malaria Drug for Coronavirus Care

    The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, decades-old malaria drugs championed by President Donald Trump for coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. Dan Diamond writes in Politico that the agency allowed for the drugs to be “donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible,” HHS said in a statement, announcing that Sandoz donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the stockpile and Bayer donated 1 million doses of chloroquine.

  • In the Fight against Coronavirus, Antivirals Are as Important as a Vaccine

    While many scientists are working on developing a coronavirus vaccine, others are busy testing antiviral drugs. Lisa Sedger writes in The Conversation that vaccines are generally only effective when administered prior to infection, but antiviral agents are important because they can treat people who already have COVID-19.
    Sedgernotes that chloroquine, a well-known anti-malarial drug, has also gained attention. One study tested it together with a broad-spectrum antibiotic azithromycin. While some COVID-19 patients in this small study recovered, other patients died (despite chloroquine treatment), and some patients ceased treatment for a variety of reasons – including the severity of their symptoms.
    “Nevertheless, people are interested in how chloroquine and azithromycin might work for coronavirus. Chloroquine exhibits antiviral activity and is currently used to treat autoimmune diseases because it also has anti-inflammatory properties,” she writes. “Azithromycin is an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections, but it, too, exhibits antiviral activity, including against rhinovirus that causes the common cold. Chloroquine might need to be given early after infection to be most effective against coronavirus.”

  • Coronavirus: Mercedes F1 to Make Breathing Aid

    University College London engineers worked with clinicians at UCLH and Mercedes Formula One to build the device, which delivers oxygen to the lungs without needing a ventilator. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) devices are already used in hospitals but are in short supply.
    Fergus Walsh writes for the BBC that China and Italy used the devices to help Covid-19 patients. Forty of the new devices have been delivered to ULCH and to three other London hospitals. If trials go well, up to 1,000 of the CPAP machines can be produced per day by Mercedes-AMG-HPP, beginning in a week’s time.
    The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has already given its approval for their use.
    Meanwhile a consortium of U.K. industrial, technology and engineering businesses in the U.K. has come together to produce medical ventilators for the NHS. The “VentilatorChallengeUK” consortium includes Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford, Rolls-Royce and Siemens.

  • A New Way of Developing Vaccines for COVID-19 Could Help the World to Prepare for Future Outbreaks

    Vaccines are one of our greatest tools to protect against infectious diseases and the world waits with bated breath for a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19). The wait might be much shorter if we can hone new methods of vaccine development. Charlie Weller writes for Wellcome Trust that although it has been just nine weeks since scientists around the world received the genetic code for COVID-19, a phase 1 clinical trial for a vaccine (mRNA-1273)(opens in a new tab) has already begun. This timescale from genomic sequence to clinical trial is unprecedented in vaccine development.
    This vaccine, unlike traditional vaccines, has been developed using ribonucleic acid (RNA) technology. If successful, the cutting-edge method could revolutionize vaccine development for future disease outbreaks. 

  • Century-Old Vaccine Investigated as a Weapon Against Coronavirus

    A vaccine that’s been used to prevent tuberculosis is being given to health-care workers in Melbourne to see if it will protect them against the coronavirus. Jason Gale writes in Bloomberg that the bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, shot has been used widely for about 100 years, with a growing appreciation for its off-target benefits. Not only is it a common immunotherapy for early-stage bladder cancer, it also seems to train the body’s first line of immune defense to better fight infections.
    The World Health Organization says it’s important to know whether the BCG vaccine can reduce disease in those infected with the coronavirus, and is encouraging international groups to collaborate with a study led by Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Nears 3,000, Cases Exceed 160,000

    Yesterday, as the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign ends across America but citizens continue to practice physical distancing for at least another month, COVID-19 cases surged top almost 160,000 and pandemic-related deaths neared 3,000. Yesterday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, MD, warned that other cities in the United States could soon look like New York. “No state or metro area will be spared,” said Birx.

  • U.S. Pharmaceutical Giant Says COVID Vaccine Could Be Ready for Emergency Use by Early 2021

    U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson says human testing of its experimental coronavirus vaccine will begin by September and says the vaccine could be available for emergency use by early next year.  

    The company said Monday that it has jointly committed more than $1 billion to develop and test a vaccine along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It said if human trials of the vaccine are successful, it is prepared to produce more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine. 

  • Pandemic Bonds: The Financial Cure We Need for COVID-19?

    Like other financial players that have embraced innovation in recent years, insurers too have developed novel tools and products. One such innovation is catastrophe bonds. A catastrophe bond provides the issuer (usually either an insurer or a reinsurer) with financial protection in case of a major catastrophe. Most catastrophe bonds cover extreme natural events such as hurricanes or earthquakes, but some bonds cover pandemics like the one the world is facing now.

  • How to Think about the Right to Privacy and Using Location Data to Fight COVID-19

    If asked to give up their privacy in the interests of stemming the coronavirus, many Americans may be inclined to say yes. Jay Stanley writes, however, that the answer requires more nuance, both because there are serious tradeoffs to be made, and because sacrificing privacy may actually backfire.

  • FDA Authorizes 15-Minute Coronavirus Test

    Federal health officials on Friday approved a coronavirus test that can provide results in less than 15 minutes, using the same technology that powers some rapid flu tests.
    Arman Azad writes for, CNN that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the test for emergency use, signaling that federal regulators were satisfied with the test’s validation data and believe its benefits outweigh any risks, such as false positives or negatives.
    The test’s maker, Abbott Laboratories, said it expects to deliver 50,000 tests per day beginning next week. The technology behind the test looks for genes that are present in the virus, similar to PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests already on the market.

  • Blood from People Who Recover from Coronavirus Could Provide a Treatment

    An old idea for fighting infections — an approach most physicians know about only from medical lore — is being revived as people wait for drugs and vaccines to thwart the novel coronavirus. If it works, the blood plasma of people who have recovered from covid-19 would be used to protect health-care workers and help sick people get well.
    Carolyn Y. Johnson and Ben Guarino write in the Washington Post that the possible therapy is based on a medical concept called “passive immunity.” People who recover from an infection develop antibodies that circulate in the blood and can neutralize the pathogen. Infusions of plasma — the clear liquid that remains when blood cells are removed — may increase people’s disease-fighting response to the virus, giving their immune systems an important boost. The approach has been used against polio, measles, mumps and flu.
    The Telegraphreports that blood donated by patients who have recovered from COVID-19 will imminently be used as part of efforts to treat victims of the disease in NHS hospitals,  can disclose. Senior officials said the health service will start giving hospital patients plasma from those who have recovered from coronavirus, “in the very near future”, after the move was approved by the U.K. medicines watchdog.

  • Italy and France Are Now Prescribing Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine as Treatments for Coronavirus Patients

    We’ve been talking about anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for about three weeks now.  However, U.S. health agencies like FDA and CDA, are still very cautious about the effectiveness and safety of the two drugs due to small trial size and lack of sufficient data. Techstartups reports that in France, the government caved to pressure from renowned Dr. Didier Raoult, who led the new additional study on 80 patients, results show a combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin to be effective in treating COVID-19. Dr Didier Raoult, a professor of infectious diseases who works at La Timone hospital in Marseille, then declared in a video on YouTube that chloroquine was a cure for Covid-19 and should be used immediately.

  • Identifying Factors Affecting COVID-19 Transmission

    Much remains unknown about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads through the environment. A major reason for this is that the behaviors and traits of viruses are highly variable – some spread more easily through water, others through air; some are wrapped in layers of fatty molecules that help them avoid their host’s immune system, while others are “naked.”
    Rob Jordan writes in Stanford News that this makes it urgent for environmental engineers and scientists to collaborate on pinpointing viral and environmental characteristics that affect transmission via surfaces, the air and fecal matter. Alexandria Boehm, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Krista Wigginton, the Shimizu Visiting Professor in Stanford’s department of civil and environmental engineering and an associate professor at the University of Michigan. co-authored a recently published viewpoint in Environmental Science & Technology calling for a broader, long-term and more quantitative approach to understanding viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, that are spread through the environment. 

  • Coronavirus Treatments and Vaccines – Research on 3 Types of Antivirals and 10 Different Vaccines Is Being Fast-Tracked

    Just three months after China first notified the World Health Organization about a deadly new coronavirus, studies of numerous antiviral treatments and potential vaccines are already underway. Never has science advanced so much in such a short period of time to combat an epidemic.
    Ignacio López-Goñi writes in The Conversationthat many of the proposals now under study come from research groups that have spent years working to combat similar coronaviruses, particularly SARS and MERS. All that accumulated knowledge has allowed scientists to advance at unprecedented speed.
    We know, for example, that the genome of the novel coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, is 79 percent like that of SARS. We know the “key” used by the virus to get into human lung cells is protein S and that the “lock” in the cell is the ACE2 receptor. We also know that the entry of the virus is facilitated by a protease, or an enzyme that breaks down proteins, from the cell itself, called TMPRSS211.