One of the first carefully done studies of the antiviral drug remdesivir shows it did not help people recover faster from coronavirus infections. But the study, conducted in China, may have been too small to show clearly whether the drug helps.
The findings of the Chinese study conflict with other hints of the drugs efficacy coming from other trials two of them also on Wednesday. One study was from the company that makes the drug and a third study from the National Institutes of Health is expected later on Wednesday.
Experts say its going to take a lot more testing and a little longer before its clear whether remdesivir can help patients recover from Covid-19 infections.
The study conducted in China was stopped early because there werent enough patients, but it indicated that the drug did not work as hoped, the team reported in the Lancet medical journal on Wednesday. Some details of this study were posted last week on the World Health Organizations website, then removed.
Gilead said earlier on Wednesday that its own study of the drug showed it may work and that patients who took the drug for five days or 10 days saw similar results. Gileads study results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. The study done in China was more carefully designed than Gileads study to show whether the drug was helping patients.
The Lancet study was a randomized, placebo controlled study meaning that patients were randomly given the drug or a dummytreatmentand the patients and doctors did not know who was getting what.
The team atChina-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University in China tested the drug using 237 coronavirus patients in Wuhan.
Future studies need to determine whether earlier treatment with remdesivir, higher doses, or combination with other antivirals or SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies, might be more effective in those with severe illness, he added.
The study may not tell anything meaningful. Larger studies enrolling more people, and conducted with careful controls will be needed to tell whether various treatments work.
The study was well designeda double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter randomized trialand well conducted, with high protocol adherence and no loss-to-follow up, John Norrie of the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, wrote in a commentary.
We eagerly await the ongoing trials.
Pfizer says it will begin testing the experimental vaccine in the United States as early as next week, and says a vaccine could be ready for emergency use in the fall, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Mainz-based BioNTech reported that the first cohort of participants had been given doses of the potential vaccine, BNT162, in a Phase 1/2 clinical study in Germany.
"Twelve study participants have been vaccinated with the vaccine candidate BNT162 in Germany since the start of the study on April 23, 2020," the company said in a statement.
No information on the results is currently available. BioNTech said around 200 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years old would be given doses ranging from 1g (microgram) to 100g to find the optimal dose for further studies.
"In addition, the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine will be investigated," added the biotech company.
Pfizer and BioNTech plan to initiate trials for BNT162 in the US on regulatory approval, expected shortly, the statement said.
The German Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedical Drugs approved the trial -- the country's first clinical trial for a vaccine against Covid 19 -- on April 22.
"The two companies plan to jointly conduct clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine candidates initially in Europe and the U.S., across multiple research sites," Pfizer announced in its first quarter report, published online Tuesday.
"The companies estimate that there is potential to supply millions of vaccine doses by the end of 2020, subject to technical success of the development program and approval by regulatory authorities, and the potential to rapidly scale up the capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses in 2021."
With the recent news that two Californians died of COVID-19 in February, three weeks earlier than the United States' first known death from the disease, it has become clear that the coronavirus was spreading in the United States long before it was detected by testing.
This fact might have you wondering if that weird cough or recurrent fever you had in late January or February was actually COVID-19. It's not impossible, experts say, but it's not necessarily likely, either. The virus was certainly circulating during that time. However, what is unknown is how prevalent it was, especially compared with the other respiratory viruses of winter.
"The initial introduction of the virus in the U.S. coincided with the peak of the flu season, so the symptoms you had, it would be difficult to untangle with flu," said Matteo Chinazzi, an associate research scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, who is on a team that has been modeling the virus' spread around the world.
Related: Coronavirus outbreak: Live updates
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was first detected by testing in the United States in January. That case occurred in a 35-year-old man who was tested on Jan. 19, four days after returning from Wuhan to his home in Snohomish County, Washington.
But it wasn't until a month later, on Feb. 26, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first known case of community spread of coronavirus in the United States, in a California resident who had no known contact with a traveler from China. Just a few days later, a group of researchers studying flu test samples in Washington state discovered a sample that contained the genetic sequence for that coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. It belonged to a teenager who had contracted the virus in the community.
It is now clear that the first cases of community spread in the United States weren't in late February, but instead were in January, when only travel-related cases were being caught and reported.
This is evident in a few different ways. First, the small genetic differences between the coronavirus in the Washington state teenager and in samples from Wuhan suggested that the virus had come over from Wuhan and had been circulating, and gradually mutating, over the course of about five weeks, infectious disease researcher Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center wrote in a blog post in early March.
Second, the newest death data also points to community spread of coronavirus in January. The first reported coronavirus death in the United States was thought to be a man in his 50s who died on Feb. 28 in King County, Washington. Autopsy results from two deaths in Kirkland, Washington, subsequently pushed the first known deaths in the U.S. back to Feb. 26.
On April 22, though, the CDC confirmed, based on autopsy results, that two people in Santa Clara county had died at home of COVID-19 on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17. Neither had a travel history and are thought to have caught the disease from community spread. Because COVID-19 typically has an incubation period of 5 to 6 days (and up to 14 days) between when people are infected and when they show symptoms, and because it usually takes several weeks after that for fatally ill patients to die, the early February deaths suggest that the individuals caught COVID-19 in mid- to late January.
Finally, modeling work based on travel patterns shows the virus arriving in New York in early January and in California by mid-January, Chinazzi told Live Science. Other states followed.
"What our model seems to indicate is that the first introduction of the virus in New York was around early January and more generally, what we see is that by the end of February, most of the states have been seeded and have local transmission," Chinazzi said.
The first confirmed community spread of the coronavirus in New York was in a lawyer from Westchester County who first went to the hospital for his symptoms on Feb. 27, New York 4 reported. Genetic studies of viral samples in New York now suggest that community spread began by late January, mostly from introductions of the virus from Europe. Researchers at both NYU Langone and Mount Sinai conducted those studies.
Epidemiologists in Colorado believe that the coronavirus landed in the Rocky Mountains somewhere between Jan. 20 and Jan. 30. The estimate comes from two different methods, Elizabeth Carlton, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado School of Public Health, told Live Science. First, simple back-of-the-envelope calculations based on when the first detected cases in Colorado's outbreak reported symptoms suggest that those people got sick in that time frame. Second, the models that Carlton and her colleagues are using to track and forecast Colorado's cases fit the idea that the first cases in the state emerged between Jan. 20 and Jan. 30. (Colorado didn't report its first cases of the virus until March 4, according to Colorado Public Radio.)
"It's ski season in Colorado in January, so it's not hard to imagine that someone from one of the West Coast states came to Colorado to go skiing and brought an infection," Carlton said. "That's just one of many possible routes."
Data on excess deaths compared to previous years can also help reveal when coronavirus landed in a particular state. In Florida, for example, The Sun-Sentinel reported that a spike in pneumonia-related deaths in mid-March could point to a nascent coronavirus outbreak starting by at least late February.
Given differences in the timing of the virus's arrival and the severity of outbreaks so far, the chance that any given respiratory illness in January or February could have been COVID-19 depends on where you live: It's far more likely that a resident of Manhattan in New York City has already had the virus compared with a resident of Manhattan, Kansas.
Flu season clouds the issue. There's no national clearinghouse of influenza case statistics, and many people with flu are not given a flu swab to confirm the diagnosis, so no one knows exactly how many cases of influenza occurred in January or February either. But the CDC estimates that there were between 39 million and 56 million cases of flu in the U.S. between October 2019 and April 2020. That means that at the peak of flu season in January and February, the number of cases of influenza virus likely far outnumbered the coronavirus cases in the United States.
It's also hard to extrapolate back today's infection numbers to estimate the prevalence of coronavirus in January and February. That's because many cases of COVID-19 are still going undiagnosed by testing, and researchers still don't know how many people infected with coronavirus experience only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, Carlton and Chinazzi said.
Antibody studies, which look for immune-system proteins made when the body fights off a virus, can reveal approximately how many people in a population have been exposed. A research study that recruited people at grocery stores and tested their blood for antibodies to the coronavirus found that 1 in 7 people in New York state, and nearly 1 in 4 in New York City, has been exposed to the coronavirus. It's unclear whether those results will generalize to the population at large people staying home to avoid even grocery stories might have lower infection rates, for example but they do suggest that the chances of someone in New York having been infected already are not negligible. However, given that the virus spreads exponentially through the population, extrapolating back to January or February shrinks the number of active cases significantly, meaning that likely only a tiny fraction of people in the city were sick with COVID-19 at that time.
That means if you had respiratory symptoms in New York in January or February, chances are probably still better that it was the flu or a seasonally circulating coronavirus.
Elsewhere, the chances of having had coronavirus in January or February are even less clear. Two controversial studies in California put the percent of people who had already been exposed at between 2.5% and 4.2% in Santa Clara county and at up to 5.6% in Los Angeles, but those data have been criticized as likely overestimating the exposure. Both may have inadvertently recruited participants who thought they might have been exposed, biasing the sample; in addition, the antibody tests they used had a high rate of false positives, making results unreliable when low levels of the population have been exposed to the disease.
In Colorado, epidemiologists are estimating that 1% of the population has already had COVID-19. A cough or fever in February would be more likely than one in January to be a symptom of COVID-19, Carlton said, simply because there would have been more circulating cases as time went on. But there's a lot of uncertainty in the 1% estimate given limitations in testing and the wide range of severity of symptoms, Carlton said.
"This is the question that everyone is interested in answering," she said. "How many people really have had it?"
Originally published on Live Science.
The novel coronavirus has now infected more than 3.1 million people and killed nearly 217,000 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
If you're just joining us, here are the latest developments:
US cases surpass 1 million: With at least 1,012,399 known Covid-19 infections, the United States accounts for nearly a third of cases officially recorded worldwide, as some states take their first stepstoward reopening.
US meat plants must stay open: President Donald Trump has signedan executive orderthat mandates meat processing plants must stay open, an official said. Some of the largest processing plants in the country have been forced to stop operations after thousands of employees tested positive for the virus.
Russia braces for tough phase: The country will "face a new and grueling phase of the pandemic," President Vladimir Putin said in a televised statement. He also acknowledged shortfalls in personal protective equipment for Russian medical workers. Russia has surpassed both Iran and China in its number of confirmed cases.
Countries easing lockdowns: New Zealand, Australia and several European countries including Portugal, France, and Greece have loosened, or put forward plans, to ease some of their toughest coronavirus restrictions.
Mike Pence mask controversy: The US vice president has come under fire for notwearing a face mask while touring the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Pence said he didn't wear one because he's tested for coronavirus regularly.
Unrest in Lebanon: Tensions continue to flare inLebanonas violent protests against economic hardship erupted again in Tripoli and other cities in defiance of a coronavirus lockdown.
Airline layoffs: British Airways has announced a restructuring and redundancy plan that could lead to layoffs for up to 12,000staff.
An administrator at the Mohegan Lake, New York, nursing home where Friedman lives said Friedman is back to her old self and celebrating life as if nothing ever happened.
"It also just goes to show how much the world needs hope that you can beat this at 101," Amy Elba told CNN.
In 1918, Angelina Sciales (now Friedman) was born on a ship that was transporting immigrants from Italy to New York City. It was in the midst of the 1918 pandemic. It's not believed that the baby contracted the disease.
Her mother died giving birth, and her two sisters helped her survive until they could reunite with their father in New York, where they lived in Brooklyn, Merola told WPIX.
One of 11 children, Friedman is the last surviving.
"She is not human," Merola said. "She has superhuman DNA."
Now a resident of the North Westchester Restorative Therapy & Nursing Center, Friedman battled yet another pandemic.
"She had gone out to the hospital for a procedure and when she returned she had tested positive," Elba told CNN.
Merola told the affiliate her mother isolated in her room and ran a fever on and off for several weeks as she battled the coronavirus until April 20, when she tested negative.
Nurses called Merola and said Friedman was doing great. She was eating again and looking for yarn to crochet with, they told her.
"She is a mover and a shaker," Elba said. "She's a big knitter and she makes all kinds of things and gives them away to visitors."
The staff threw a big birthday party for Friedman's 101st birthday, and last year she was crowned prom queen.
"She's super active. You couldn't believe it for her age," Elba said. "Still doing her leisure activities probably that she's done forever."
Like many other facilities, Elba said, they have set up alternative means for patients to remain in contact with their families.
Due to a back injury, Merola hasn't been able to visit her mother since February, but she doesn't live far from home. Because her mother is nearly deaf, they can't speak on the phone.
As prom season approaches, Elba said that although the schools might not get a dance, Friedman is certainly going to have hers -- and hopes she will be named prom queen for the second year in a row.
On Sunday, the Paediatric Intensive Care Society UK (PICS) tweeted an "urgent alert" from the National Health Service England about a small rise in the number of cases of critically ill children presenting "overlapping features of toxic shock syndrome and atypical Kawasaki disease with blood parameters" -- with some of the children testing positive for Covid-19.
The urgent alert, sent to UK general practitioners by National Health Service (NHS) England warned that over the last three weeks, "there has been an apparent rise in the number of children of all ages presenting with a multisystem inflammatory state requiring intensive care across London and also in other regions of the UK," the Health Service Journal first reported Monday.
The alert added: "There is a growing concern that a [covid-19] related inflammatory syndrome is emerging in children in the UK, or that there may be another, as yet unidentified, infectious pathogen associated with these cases," HSJ added.
Kawasaki disease, also known as Kawasaki syndrome, is a rare childhood illness that causes the walls of the blood vessels in the body to become inflamed.
The group said that while there had been "very few cases" of critically unwell children with Covid-19 admitted to pediatric intensive care units in the UK and around the world, they were aware of a "small number of children nationally" who fit the clinical picture described in the NHS alert.
The number of Covid-19 cases among children remains small and while some children and infants have been sick with Covid-19, adults make up most of the known cases to date, according to the CDC.
Health care professionals urge calm
Health care professionals have reassured parents that the risk of children becoming severely ill with the virus remains low.
"Thankfully Kawasaki-like diseases are very rare, as currently are serious complications in children related to Covid-19, but it is important that clinicians are made aware of any potential emerging links so that they are able to give children and young people the right care fast," Professor Simon Kenny, NHS national clinical director for children and young people said in a statement sent to CNN.
In response to the reports, Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said that although a small number of children can become severely ill with Covid-19, it is "very rare," with evidence showing that children appear to be least affected by the virus.
"However our advice remains the same: parents should be reassured that children are unlikely to be seriously ill with Covid-19 but if they are concerned about their children's health for any reason, they should seek help from a health professional," Viner said.
Dr. Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said that the NHS England alert was important information to have here in the United States.
"I think it's really important that an alert like that goes out, not to alarm anybody but to have people be aware of the fact that this can happen. There have been an increased number of cases like this reported in Italy as well as Spain. Here in the US, I think we're just starting to see it," Tan told CNN Monday.
"Here in Chicago at Lurie Children's Hospital, we are just starting to see an increase in the number of older adolescents that are being hospitalized with fairly severe Covid disease that is requiring treatment," Tan said. "Here in Chicago, some of the kids have some of the underlying conditions that would predispose you to getting more severe Covid disease, such as obesity and hypertension."
Tan added that racial disparities are also emerging among Covid-19 cases in children.
"Out of Los Angeles they were reporting that younger African-Americans and Latinos were being affected by Covid more severely and actually being hospitalized," Tan said.
Photo by Matt Hoffman
Above: A lab worker prepares samples to be tested for COVID-19 in San Diego, Feb. 28, 2020.
The San Diego region reached a grim milestone this weekend: there have now been more than 100 reported deaths due to COVID-19.
Of the 113 people who've died up to this point, just about half of them were white, while just under 33% were Hispanic and just under 10% were Asian, according to data from San Diego County as of Monday.
Only two people who've died so far from the coronavirus in San Diego County were African American.
This is just a snapshot and these numbers could change significantly in the coming weeks. Yet, so far San Diego is going against statewide trends, which show that a disproportionate number of people who died were Hispanic or black. Statewide, 43.5% of the people who died were Hispanic and 6.3% were black.
But like elsewhere, the virus is proving to be more fatal to men than women in San Diego County. About 54% of those who died in the county were men, while 46% were women.
And older people are far more vulnerable the median age of those whove died in the county is 78. This is consistent with what is happening throughout the world.
More than half the people who died were from the eastern and southern parts of the county, while the countys northern coast accounts for the fewest under 5%.
Almost all of the people who died have had underlying medical conditions only 3.5% haven't.
It is highly likely that significantly more deaths have occurred than those reported to the county, said Dr. Doug Richman, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego.
"People should know that the numbers we're seeing are underestimates because many people are dying at home or have died without being tested," he said. "Even now that tests are more available, they have only been available to diagnose people with symptoms including fever."
Richman added that people who live in denser populated areas are at more risk, along with those in certain parts of the county, including the border area.
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Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday toured the Mayo Clinic without wearing a mask, despite that renowned medical facility telling him that masks are required for visitors and everyone else there to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
At one point during his visit to the Mayo Clinic, video of Pence showed him surrounded by 10 people, including a patient, who unlike him all were wearing masks.
In this pool image, Vice President Mike Pence Visits the Mayo Clinic Rochester Facilities, April 28, 2020. Pence is surrounded by 9 other people with masks including a patient.
Press Pool Video
Pence, who leads President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, later suggested to reporters that he did not need to wear a mask because he is tested regularly for the virus, and does not have it.
The Mayo Clinic,which is located in Rochester, Minnesota, is requiring all patients, visitors and staff to wear a face covering or mask to slow the spread of Covid-19.The facility said that the mask requirement is part of its protocol "for ensuring your safety."
The clinic said in a Twitter post that it had informed Pence of its policy mandating masks before he toured the facility.
About a half-hour after that tweet was posted, it was deleted by the Mayo Clinic.
People wearing masks greeted Pence at an airport, video shows.
The vice president was not wearing a mask when he got off his plane and headed to the Mayo Clinic, where he was greeted with applause and cheers by facility workers, most of whom were wearing masks.
While at the facility, Pence participated in a discussion with top doctors there, along with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Republican whose district includes the city of Rochester.
Pence, who was accompanied on his visit by federal Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, appeared to be the only official who participated in that discussion who did not wear a mask, according to a pool report. Hahn reportedly wore a mask during the tour.
On the same day that Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, the tally of Americans who have been diagnosed with coronavirus infections topped 1 million.At least 57,266 Americans have died from Covid-19.
Pence was asked about why he did not wear a mask in the first question at a news conference at the facility after he completed the tour and discussion.
"As vice president of the United States, I'm tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, and everyone who is around me is tested for the coronavirus," Pence said.
"When the [federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] issued guidelines about wearing a mask it was their recognition that people that may have the coronavirus could prevent the possibility of conveying the virus to someone else by wearing a mask," Pence said.
"And since I don't have the coronavirus I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to be here to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health-care personnel and look them in the eye and say, 'thank you,'" the vice president said.
Pence later was asked by another reporter how frequently he is tested, and whether he thought that wearing a mask might send a "positive signal to the American public."
In response, Pence did not directly answer the question about the signal wearing a mask could send.
But the vice president reiterated that he was tested "on a regular basis."
He added, "And I agree with the CDC guidance that wearing a mask doesn't necessarily protect you from the coronavirus, but wearing a mask might prevent you from inadvertently conveying the virus to a loved one, family member or friend."
"So we think they're very useful in that respect, and we respect that altogether," Pence said.
A Mayo Clinic spokesman, when asked for comment, said in email that, "Mayo shared the masking policy with the VP's office."
The spokesman did not respond to the question about why the facility deleted its tweet about Pence.
But the Mayo Clinic did post a new tweet saying it was "grateful" for Pence's visit.
Pence's aides last week told The New York Timesthat he did not wear a mask for the same reasons he gave Tuesday.
But the newspaper noted that Pence could contract the virus between his tests, and that the tests are not always accurate.
In this pool image, Vice President Mike Pence Visits the Mayo Clinic Rochester Facilities, April 28, 2020.
Press Pool Video
Trump three weeks ago said that new guidance from the CDC urged all Americans to wear masks in public settings, to help reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus.
But Trump said he would not follow that guidance himself.
"I just don't want to wear one myself, it's a recommendation," Trump said at the time.
"Somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, dictators, kings, queens, I don't know, I don't see it for myself."
-- Additional reporting by Tucker Higgins.
Dr.Scott Gottliebtold CNBC on Wednesday that millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine could be available in the fall to be used in human trials.
It could be"enough to use in large-scale studies if you have an outbreak in American city where you might deploy the vaccine in an experimental protocol but deploy it nonetheless," Gottlieb said on "Squawk Box."
The hope would be to try to contain the outbreak and "validate whether or not the vaccine is truly safe and effective for mass inoculation of the population," theformer Food and Drug Administration commissioner explained.
Gottlieb, who sits on the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina, stressed that for the vaccine to be used in such a scenario, it must have cleared early stage clinical trials, demonstrating it was both safe and potentially effective.
The comments come one day after Pfizer reported first-quarter earnings, with the drugmaker saying Tuesday that it's taking steps to accelerate its work on a vaccine for Covid-19.
Pfizer, which is developing the vaccine alongsideGerman firm BioNTech, hopes to begin human trials by the end of this month. Pfizer said it could potentially have millions of doses ready by year's end.
Gottlieb, who prefaced his answer about vaccines on CNBC by pointing to his Pfizer board role, said, "I'll be careful about saying too many specific things about Pfizer in particular."
"I think that there's going to be a number of companies that have substantial doses available in the fall," he said.
In addition to the pursuits of Pfizer and BioNTech, companies such asModernaandJohnson & Johnsonare working on developing a vaccine for Covid-19,which has infected more than 1 million people in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Manufacturing capability remains a key hurdle to widespread deployment of a potential Covid-19 vaccine across the world, said Gottlieb, who also is a CNBC contributor.
It will be "well into 2021 until anyone is going to have a vaccine available in the kinds of quantities that would be required to inoculate the entire United States or the entire European continent or other countries, low and middle-income countries," he said.
"We are a ways off in terms of having a vaccine available at .. that kind of scale," he said. "But in doses of millions, it could be available much sooner than that."
Gottlieb made his remarks on vaccine development Wednesday shortly beforeGilead Sciencesit is aware of "positive data" from one of its studies looking at antiviral drugremdesivir as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.
CNBC's Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.
Samsung logo at store in Shanghai. A South Korean multinational conglomerate.
Alex Tai | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it expects a decline in overall earnings for the three months ending in June due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The virus, which causes the disease Covid-19, has infected more than 3.1 million people worldwide in just a few months and killed over 216,000.
Samsung warned sales and profits of smartphones and TVs are "expected to decline significantly as COVID-19 affects demand and leads to store and plant closures globally." It added that there is a possibility it might delay or cut back its investment in 5G technology.
Still,Samsung said it plans to go ahead with the launch of new models for its foldable smartphones and the Galaxy Note in the latter half of the year despite lingering uncertainties.
Other tech companies, including Apple, have issued similar warnings as the global economic downturn caused by the virus outbreak forces people to cut back on nonessential spending.
But as millions around the world are being forced to stay indoors, Samsung's main profit-making memory business stands to benefit.
The tech giant said it expects continued robust demand for its chips used in servers and PCs as more people work from home, consume streaming content and participate in online education. Samsung's memory components are used in data centers, PCs and smartphones.
Memory chip makers are benefiting from investments in data centers by companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google, according to Sanjeev Rana, a senior analyst at CLSA.
"For the time being, I think this trend will continue," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "We have strong visibility into the second quarter orders and pricing. We think that prices, especially for the server DRAM, will go up by like 20% to 30%."
DRAM memory is used in computers and servers to run various applications at the same time.
Looking ahead to the second quarter, the Company expects the memory business to remain solid, but overall earnings are likely to decline from the previous quarter because COVID-19 will significantly impact demand for several of its core products.
Beyond the second quarter, Rana said there's less visibility on how demand and price for memory chips will affect earnings for companies like Samsung, but he expects third-quarter numbers to "hold up well." Once the Covid-19 crisis is over, there could be some deceleration in demand in the second half, he explained.
For its part, Samsung signaled an optimistic outlook for the memory business.
"Looking ahead to the second quarter, the Company expects the memory business to remain solid, but overall earnings are likely to decline from the previous quarter because COVID-19 will significantly impact demand for several of its core products," Samsung said in a statement.
Samsung added that in the second half of the year, uncertainties will persist as "the duration and impact of the pandemic remain unknown."
For the three months ended in March, Samsung reported its operating profit was 6.45 trillion Korean won (almost $5.3 billion), in line with earlier guidance, as earnings from the memory business offset the weakness in its consumer electronics division and display business. Revenue came in at 55.33 trillion won.
Samsung shares gave up earlier gains of 0.6% to trade down 0.2%.
