California called for all people 65 and older to shelter in their homes. Massachusetts moved to ban dining in at bars and restaurants beginning Tuesday, effectively closing Bostons bars for St. Patricks Day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended no gatherings with 50 people or more be held for the next eight weeks. And Puerto Rico set some of the strictest measures in the United States, imposing a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and closing nonessential businesses.
As the number of coronavirus cases in the United States climbed to over 3,100 across 49 states on Sunday, and after weeks of conflicting signals from the federal government, state and local officials across the nation began enacting stricter measures to try to slow the viruss spread.
Massachusetts said that beginning on Tuesday bars and restaurants would be able to offer takeout and delivery only. The state also banned gatherings of more than 25 people and ordered all public and private schools to close Tuesday.
I realize these measures are unprecedented, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts said Sunday night, but were asking our residents to take a deep breath and understand the rationale behind this guidance.
The state of Ohio ordered restaurants and bars to close as of 9 p.m. Sunday, but said it would allow food to be carried out and delivered. Marylands governor ordered casinos, racetracks and betting facilities to close indefinitely.
Even as public health experts were publicly urging social distancing, Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, went on Fox News and encouraged healthy people to dine out at restaurants. Likely you can get in easily, he said. Lets not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small business going.
And Oklahomas governor was criticized on social media after sharing a selfie on Twitter on Saturday of him with his children having dinner at a packed food hall in the heart of Oklahoma City. In the since-deleted tweet, he captioned the photo with, Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. Its packed tonight! #supportlocal #OklaProud.
The scope of the public health crisis became even clearer over the weekend as officials in Louisiana, New York and Virginia reported their first deaths tied to the coronavirus. Only West Virginia was without a single diagnosis.
In the Omaha, Neb., area, officials reported the first known instance of community spread. In Illinois, a nursing facility where a woman tested positive was placed on lockdown. And in Pittsburgh, where the first local cases were announced on Saturday, city leaders urged bars to limit the number of people they allowed inside.
New York City officials advised all members of the United Nations diplomatic community that they should assume they have been exposed to the coronavirus, should practice the maximum-possible social distancing and should not expect any special accommodations if they are sickened, according to a memo of a teleconference briefing shared by diplomats.
Two American emergency-room doctors one in Washington State and one in New Jersey were in critical condition with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the American College of Emergency Physicians said on Saturday. Dr. William Jaquis, the organizations president, said it was unclear whether the doctor in Washington, who is in his 40s, had contracted the virus at the hospital. The physician in Paterson, N.J., who is 70, had been leading his hospitals emergency preparedness.
The authorities in Texas began preparing judges for the possibility that they may have to be ready to order the quarantine of coronavirus patients who refuse to isolate themselves.
Despite the clearing out of grocery-store shelves in recent days, the nations biggest retailers, dairy farmers and meat producers said the food supply chain remains intact and has been ramping up to meet the stockpiling brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, President Trump said he had had a phone call with the chief executives of several food suppliers, who said they were committed to staying open through the pandemic. He said the call was very reassuring and said there was no need to hoard essential food supplies.
You dont have to buy so much, take it easy, just relax, Mr. Trump said. Were doing great, it all will pass.
SACRAMENTO Across California, as the coronavirus marches through communities, life as everyone understands it in the Golden State is changing dramatically, hour by hour, minute by minute.
The state has begun enacting extreme measures to halt the coronavirus outbreak. On Monday, seven counties around Silicon Valley, one of the hardest-hit areas in the nation, announced a shelter-at-home order that begins Tuesday, which Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose said was the strongest directive yet in the United States. Residents, including those living in San Francisco, were told not to go out for three weeks except to meet essential needs.
A day earlier, Gov. Gavin Newsom had told all residents older than 65 to stay in their homes. He called for the closure of bars, nightclubs and wineries, and restrictions on restaurants. He banned visits to hospitals and nursing homes unless patients were on the edge of death. He announced plans to buy hotels to house some of the states 150,000 homeless people.
For days, the virus has consumed the states leaders. In the capital, Mr. Newsom huddled around a conference table with his advisers, scrambling to sort out how 6 million public school children would do if they were not in class.
In the heart of Silicon Valley, Mr. Liccardo raced down the 101 freeway dialing technology executives, begging them to contribute to a fund to prevent people from falling into homelessness.
And in the fields of the Central Valley, the nations breadbasket, Miguel Arias, Fresnos City Council president, inspected the tight living quarters of farmworkers mattresses stacked up in a garage and recoiled at the thought of what would happen if, or more likely when, the virus spreads there.
California, Americas most populous state, with an economy bigger than the United Kingdoms, has been remarkably resilient since the Great Recession, powered by technology, agriculture and Hollywood. No one knows how far the mounting toll from the virus will climb, but California is already one of the hardest-hit states, and stands as one of the places with the most to lose.
The shelter-in-place order announced on Monday, which goes into effect on Tuesday, is expected to disrupt life for millions of residents in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties. The city of Berkeley also issued the same order.
This is not the moment for half-measures, and history wont forgive us for waiting an hour more, Mr. Liccardo said.
Residents are being ordered to stay home except for essential reasons, which include buying food; people can also leave for outdoor activities including walking, hiking or running and caring for a pet.
Mayor Joe Goethals of San Mateo put it this way: Im asking people to go home with their families and to stay there until they are told otherwise.
Mayor London Breed of San Francisco said necessary government offices and essential stores would be allowed to remain open. The order, she said in a Twitter post, would be effective at midnight.
In a state very familiar with disasters, from wildfires to earthquakes, the leaders of California found themselves in recent days confronting something altogether different, with no playbook to lean on.
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The state that has pioneered the technology that allows people to connect remotely is quickly realizing how much human contact is important not only for the economy but also for the well-being of its residents.
In the time it takes for an email to drop in an inbox, or a news alert to flash across an iPhone screen, school districts, one after another, were closing. Movie productions were shutting down, premieres canceled. At the ports, terminals were shuttered, as fewer ships, loaded with consumer goods and parts for American factories, set sail from China. And exports, poultry and oranges, were piling up on the docks.
Even Disneyland was closing its gates, and the ski lifts stopped running at resorts.
With the sense of crisis growing by the minute, the governors office was confronting a dizzying number of problems.
One moment it was how to prevent renters from being evicted and homeowners from being foreclosed on.
Another, how to expand the states capacity to test for the virus.
And the school closings, designed to enforce social distancing and halt the spread of the virus, raised a number of difficult questions.
In shirt sleeves, and as aides came in and out of the room with news updates, the governor considered how to feed low-income children who rely on free or reduced-price lunches. What about child care for parents who cannot work from home, especially health care workers who are needed at hospitals to treat sick patients?
This is real, Mr. Newsom said while managing the many crises. This is raw.
Mr. Newsom has said he expected the economic damage from the crisis to be worse than the aftermath of 9/11 but not as bad as the financial crisis of 2008, but those assessments are changing by the day. Yet with a $21 billion budget surplus, plus a rainy-day fund of close to $16 billion, Mr. Newsom said he was confident the state could manage the economic fallout from the crisis. We are well positioned from a cash perspective to get through this, he said. More perhaps than any other state.
But at the ground level, the pain is coming fast. Drivers have been laid off and forced to sell their trucks. Those who are still working are putting off oil changes and maintenance to stay afloat.
Were picking and choosing which bills to pay, said Gio Marz, 30, a truck driver who hauls containers from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to warehouses in Southern California.
Restaurants are closing, and real estate agents say buyers are pulling their offers because sagging stock portfolios have left them spooked and shriveled the amount of cash they have for down payments.
Even the most optimistic economists are forecasting a recession. This is the first time in 10 years that Ive thought, OK, this is the thing that could finally tip us into recession, said Chris Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a consulting firm.
Fallout from the coronavirus has been swift across the state.
At one of Mayor Liccardos favorite Chinese restaurants, Hunan Taste, in San Jose, only two of the 15 tables had customers at a time when the restaurant would normally be overflowing with city hall workers, lawyers and sheriffs deputies. The owner had already laid off two kitchen workers. At an empty Mexican restaurant Mr. Liccardo visited, the head of a local Latino business organization told him business owners were weeks away from shutting down. A nearby fitness studio was empty, and classes were canceled.
This is grim, Mr. Liccardo said. This looks worse than 2008.
Later, in a nearly empty City Hall, he met with three aides, all sitting several feet apart in accordance with the countys social distancing guidelines, and discussed converting school gymnasiums and the hulking city convention center into isolation centers for the sick.
The mayor estimates that 8 percent of city revenues have vanished, blowing up plans for a balanced budget and raising the likelihood of cuts to city programs.
Miles away, in the farming community of Mendota in the Central Valley, Maria Martinezs home, a single-story ranch with brick and stucco siding and solar panels on the roof, would seem an ideal place to hunker down and keep a safe distance from others.
But peek inside, and several single mattresses sit in the garage. Like many of her neighbors, Ms. Martinez, a 57-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, rents out beds for $300 a month to the farmworkers who cycle through town. She crams them in wherever she can find space sometimes there are 20 renters living in 1,100 square feet.
Mr. Arias, the Fresno official who was visiting her, worried the cramped living environment, pervasive around town, would fuel a spread of the coronavirus if it reaches the community.
Theyre living on top of each other, he said. Theres no way that they can honor the six-foot social distance. Thats the most dangerous part.
At La Nayarit, a grocery store and wire transfer operation just outside Mendotas main commercial district, the owners use Clorox wipes on all their counters and door handles at least once every two hours. One of the owners, Baudelia Fuentes, 73, microwaved dollar bills on a recent afternoon, hoping that would disinfect them.
The most anxiety-provoking question around town is, what happens if the virus spreads among farmworkers?
Oh, were done, said Rolando Castro, the mayor of Mendota.
It would threaten not only farm operations, but also the economy of a town with five dollar stores and where 42 percent of families live in poverty. There will not be money to spend in the local pool hall, or at the taco truck across the street. Or at the auto mechanic shop that Mr. Castro owns.
As a sense of crisis convulsed California and the nation, tourists in Southern California enjoyed their last few hours at Disneyland, which was closed as of Saturday. The park has closed only twice before at times of national crisis: after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The weather was overcast, and crowds were noticeably smaller than usual. The line for the popular Space Mountain ride was just over an hour, and the wait for the Matterhorn ride was about 30 minutes. On a normal spring weekday, waits for those rides can be twice as long.
If Im going to get corona, I might as well get it at Disneyland instead of work, said Sami Nielsen while strolling down the parks main street. She traveled to California from Arizona with friends to celebrate her 27th birthday.
After a series of meetings late Friday, Mr. Newsom signed an executive order requiring the state to continue to send money to local districts to pay for distance learning and school meals and to help supervise children while they are out of school.
I am deeply concerned about the capacity of these communities that are shutting down the schools already to meet the needs of their children and parents, he said.
The terrifying backdrop to all of this is the steadily growing number of confirmed infections over the weekend the number of infections in California reached 380 and the certainty they will rise sharply as testing becomes more widespread.
Tests are going to substantially increase, the governor said. Positive rates will substantially increase. The anxiety and concern about anticipating the publics reaction knowing that will heighten anxiety is something we are all trying to manage.
Tim Arango reported from Sacramento, Thomas Fuller from San Jose, John Eligon from Mendota, and Conor Dougherty from Oakland. Louis Keene contributed from Anaheim, and Joe Purtell from Elk Grove.
Coronavirus science and news
Updated March 14 with new vaccine information.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, has spread to every continent except Antarctica. Not too long after the virus was first discovered at the end of December, labs turned their sights toward treatment.
Currently, however, there is no cure for this coronavirus, and treatments are based on the kind of care given for influenza (seasonal flu) and other severe respiratory illnesses, known as "supportive care," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These treatments essentially treat the symptoms, which often in the case of COVID-19 involve fever, cough and shortness of breath. In mild cases, this might simply mean rest and fever-reducing medications such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) for comfort.
In hospitals, doctors and nurses are sometimes treating COVID-19 patients with the antiviral drug oseltamivir, or Tamiflu, which seems to suppress the virus' reproduction in at least some cases. This is somewhat surprising, Michigan Tech virologist Ebenezer Tumban told Live Science, as Tamiflu was designed to target an enzyme on the influenza virus, not on coronaviruses. The National Institutes of Health has begun a clinical trial at the University of Nebraska Medical Center to test the antiviral remdesivir for COVID-19, the agency announced Feb. 25. In China, doctors are also testing an array of other antivirals originally designed to treat Ebola and HIV, Nature Biotechnology reported.
In cases in which pneumonia inhibits breathing, treatment involves ventilation with oxygen. Ventilators blow air into the lungs through a mask or a tube inserted directly into the windpipe. A New England Journal of Medicine study of 1,099 hospitalized patients with the coronavirus in China found that 41.3% needed supplemental oxygen and 2.3% needed invasive mechanical ventilation. Glucocorticoids were given to 18.6% of patients, a treatment often used to reduce inflammation and help open airways during respiratory disease.
There is no vaccine for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Scientists are working to develop one, Hilary Marston, a medical officer and policy advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said in a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health webcast on Monday (March 2).
As of March 14, doctors in Seattle are recruiting volunteers to participate in a clinical trial for an experimental vaccine for COVID-19 that's being developed by the biotechnology company Moderna Therapeutics. However, biomedical ethicists are concerned that a critical step in vaccine development was skipped. In order to fast-track the vaccine, the researchers didnt first show that it triggered an immune response in animals, a step that is normally required before human testing, Live Science previously reported.
The researchers did begin testing the experimental vaccine on lab mice on the same day they started recruiting people for the clinical trial, Stat News reported. The mice did show an immune response that was similar to the one triggered by an experimental vaccine for a related coronavirus MERS-CoV. (Vaccines work by priming your immune system to recognize a virus like SARS-CoV-2 as an enemy and put up an attack against it.)
Related: How this experimental vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 would work
Even so, doctors aren't sure how much this "fast-tracking" will speed up the time it takes to develop and bring such a vaccine to market.
Before this experimental vaccine was in the works, Marston had said not to expect a vaccine in the near term. "If everything moves as quickly as possible, the soonest that it could possibly be is about one-and-a-half to two years. That still might be very optimistic," Marston said.
The novel coronavirus, now called SARS-CoV-2, causes the disease COVID-19. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, 2019, though it seems to have been spreading well before that date. Since then, it has spread to every continent except Antarctica. The death rate appears to be higher than that of the seasonal flu, but it also varies by location as well as a person's age, underlying health conditions, among other factors. For instance, in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, the death rate reached 2.9%, whereas it was just 0.4% in other provinces in China, according to a study published Feb. 18 in the China CDC Weekly.
Scientists aren't certain where the virus originated, though they know that coronaviruses (which also include SARS and MERS) are passed between animals and humans. Research comparing the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 with a viral database suggests it originated in bats. Since no bats were sold at the seafood market in Wuhan at the diseases epicenter, researchers suggest an intermediate animal, possibly the pangolin (an endangered mammal) is responsible for the transmission to humans. There are currently no treatments for the disease, but labs are working on various types of treatments, including a vaccine.
Originally published on Live Science.
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(SEATTLE) U.S. researchers gave the first shot to the first person in a test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday leading off a worldwide hunt for protection even as the pandemic surges.
With a careful jab in a healthy volunteers arm, scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle begin an anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in record time after the new virus exploded from China and fanned across the globe.
Read more: Want a Coronavirus Vaccine, Fast? Heres a Solution
Were team coronavirus now, Kaiser Permanente study leader Dr. Lisa Jackson said on the eve of the experiment. Everyone wants to do what they can in this emergency.
The Associated Press observed as the studys first participant, an operations manager at a small tech company, received the injection inside an exam room. Several others were next in line for a test that will ultimately give 45 volunteers two doses, a month apart.
We all feel so helpless. This is an amazing opportunity for me to do something, said Jennifer Haller, 43, of Seattle. Shes the mother of two teenagers and they think its cool that shes taking part in the study.
Mondays milestone marked just the beginning of a series of studies in people needed to prove whether the shots are safe and could work. Even if the research goes well, a vaccine wouldnt be available for widespread use for 12 to 18 months, said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Thats still important if the virus becomes a long-term threat.
This vaccine candidate, code-named mRNA-1273, was developed by the NIH and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Moderna Inc. Theres no chance participants could get infected from the shots because they dont contain the coronavirus itself.
Its not the only potential vaccine in the pipeline. Dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine against COVID-19. Another candidate, made by Inovio Pharmaceuticals, is expected to begin its own safety study in the U.S., China and South Korea next month.
The Seattle experiment got underway days after the World Health Organization declared the new virus outbreak a pandemic because of its rapid global spread, infecting more than 169,000 people and killing more than 6,500.
COVID-19 has upended the worlds social and economic fabric since China first identified the virus in January, with regions shuttering schools and businesses, restricting travel, canceling entertainment and sporting events, and encouraging people to stay away from each other.
Starting what scientists call a first-in-humans study is a momentous occasion for scientists, but Jackson described her teams mood as subdued. Theyve been working round-the-clock readying the research in a part of the U.S. struck early and hard by the virus.
Still, going from not even knowing that this virus was out there to have any vaccine in testing in about two months is unprecedented, Jackson told the AP.
Some of the studys carefully chosen healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 55, will get higher dosages than others to test how strong the inoculations should be. Scientists will check for any side effects and draw blood samples to test if the vaccine is revving up the immune system, looking for encouraging clues like the NIH earlier found in vaccinated mice.
We dont know whether this vaccine will induce an immune response, or whether it will be safe. Thats why were doing a trial, Jackson stressed. Its not at the stage where it would be possible or prudent to give it to the general population.
Most of the vaccine research under way globally targets a protein aptly named spike that studs the surface of the new coronavirus and lets it invade human cells. Block that protein and people wont get infected.
Researchers at the NIH copied the section of the virus genetic code that contains the instructions for cells to create the spike protein. Moderna encased that messenger RNA into a vaccine.
The idea: The body will become a mini-factory, producing some harmless spike protein. When the immune system spots the foreign protein, it will make antibodies to attack and be primed to react quickly if the person later encounters the real virus. Thats a much faster way of producing a vaccine than the traditional approach of growing virus in the lab and preparing shots from either killed or weakened versions of it.
But because vaccines are given to millions of healthy people, it takes time to test them in large enough numbers to spot an uncommon side effect, cautioned Dr. Nelson Michael of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which is developing a different vaccine candidate.
The science can go very quickly but, first, do no harm, right? he told reporters last week.
The Seattle research institute is part of a government network of centers that test all kinds of vaccines, and was chosen for the coronavirus vaccine study before COVID-19 began spreading widely in Washington state.
Kaiser Permanente screened dozens of people, looking for those who have no chronic health problems and arent currently sick. Researchers arent checking whether would-be volunteers already had a mild case of COVID-19 before deciding if theyre eligible. If some did, scientists will be able to tell by the number of antibodies in their pre-vaccination blood test and account for that, Jackson said. Participants will be paid $100 for each clinic visit in the study.
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Neergaard reported from Washington, D.C.
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]]> According to NIAID directer Dr Anthony Fauci, it will take a year for a Covid-19 vaccine to be available globally. Credit: Shutterstock.
Covid-19 has now been declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. Since the very beginning of the outbreak early in 2020, the pharma industry and the medical community have been focusing their efforts on investigating drugs that can be repurposed to treat the symptoms, as well as developing new vaccines to tackle the viruss spread.
To date, the Chinese authorities have approved an anti-viral against Covid-19 called fapilavir. This drug, which is manufacture red by Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical, and was developed to treat influenza. Other antiviral drugs being studied for repurposing are Gileads Ebola drug remdesivir, Roches rheumatoid arthritis treatment Actemra and AbbVies HIV drugs Kaletra and Aluvia.
Visit our Covid-19 microsite for the latest coronavirus news, analysis and updates.
Although there has been success in repurposing, development of novel treatments takes much longer. Vaccines are crucial to viral pandemic management because they can confer immunity among the general population, meaning this virus will be more easily contained in the future.
There has been some debate about precisely how long this will take, primarily because Israeli researchers from the state-funded Migal Galilee Research Institute announced they might have a vaccine for the virus in eight to ten weeks. This is because they have been working on a vaccine for Infectious Bronchitis Virus, which has been found to be genetically similar to Covid-19.
Readers of Pharmaceutical Technology have been voting on how long they think it will take for a vaccine to be available to patients. With over 164,000 votes cast, the results show than almost 33% of readers believe it will take over a year, while slightly more 28% are optimistic there could be a vaccine available within three months.
Experts are clear that it will take at least a year for a vaccine to be developed against Covid-19; this situation is not helped by the likelihood that the virus has already mutated into two strains.
US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr Anthony Fauci told the US House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee on 11 March: With regard to vaccines, we were able to go very quickly from understanding the virus and its genetic sequence to actually develop a vaccine. However, in the next four weeks or so, we will go into Phase I trials getting it into Phase I in a month is the quickest that anyone has ever done in the history of vaccinology.
So we go into Phase I, it will take around three months to determine if it is safe, then you go intoPhase II to determine if it works. Since this is vaccine, you dont want to give it to normal healthy people with the possibility that it will hurt them or that it will not work. So [this] phase is critical [and] will take another eight months or so.
So when youve heard me say that we would not have a vaccine that will be ready to start to deploy for a year to a year and half; that is the time frame. Anyone who thinks they can move more quickly than that, I believe would be cutting corners that would be detrimental.
Although this 12 to 18-month timeline will be difficult to speed up significantly for this pandemic, the scale of the spread and panic Covid-19 has caused must open the pharma industrys eyes about how to ensure the world is better prepared for future outbreaks and pandemics. This is particularly important given that research shows deadly outbreaks are more likely as the climate crisis progresses.
In this context, Virtual Clinical, a clinical research organisation specialising in virtual trials, has called for speeding up the clinical development process through virtualising clinical trials.
We need to learn from the past, and look at how it took the US Food and Drug Administration more than five years to approve the Ebola vaccine after the start of the first human trials, Virtual Clinical CEO Mark Thomas said in a press release. Using virtual clinical trials, enrolment will be quicker, costs will be reduced, and symptom and safety reporting can be more accurate.
He explains that currently there are hybrid versions a noteworthy example is Medidatas aspirin study in the US but there is a need to further virtualise. Every week is critical in a global emergency, he says. By changing the way we run clinical trials, we can provide more hope to get a vaccine [developed] earlier. This transformation of clinical trials will require regulators to accept these virtual initiatives as an equivalent to the existing approaches.
Another way to improve and speed up the clinical trial process is through better and connected data collection. To this end, Amsterdam-based data company Castor announced it would provide free access to its electronic data capture (EDC) system for all non-profit Covid-19 research projects.
Being able to standardise clinical data being accessed globally would help all researchers to understand the natural history of the disease, and describe clinical phenotypes and treatment interventions, CEO Derk Arts noted in a statement.
He adds: Epidemics and pandemics spread fast, they do not wait for clinical trials or academic journals to publish results.
With Covid-19, we have an opportunity to get it right and accelerate the discovery of cures through cooperation and collaboration. The best way to save lives is to share meaningful data in real-time. This new global health crisis caused by Covid-19 may spark systemic change a data revolution that could save thousands of lives.
Focusing on the vaccines specifically, one of the leaders in vaccine development for this current outbreak is the Norwegian Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Since the outbreak first started spreading globally in January, CEPI has funded multiple vaccine candidates from biotech firms, pharma companies and university labs; importantly, the innovations CEPI supports are those that not only intend to produce a vaccine against this novel virus, but involve pioneering technologies that can speed up the development of vaccines in future outbreaks.
The so-called platform technologies they support are those where the basic components of the vaccine can be used as a backbone and adapted for use against new, emerging pathogens simply by inserting their genetic sequence.
One example is CEPIs partnership with US-based Moderna; this company has already received support from NIAID. The biotech leverages mRNA technology and its Covid-19 vaccine is encoded for a pre-fusion stabilised form of the Spike S protein.
Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel said: We believe our mRNA vaccine technology offers potential advantages in the speed of development and production scalability, which positions Moderna to potentially develop a vaccine against coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which is now known as Covid-19. At the end of February, Moderna announced it had shipped its novel vaccine against Covid-19 for Phase I testing.
Biotech giant Regeneron said it aims to have doses of a potential drug for COVID-19 ready to start human clinical trials by early summer.
The approach involves creating antibodies to the virus that could be used to treat the disease and to prevent it, Regeneron said in a statement Tuesday.
The company had previously said it aimed to have hundreds of thousands of doses ready for human testing in late summer, so the new goal is a significant acceleration. Regeneron said it plans to start large-scale manufacturing by the middle of next month and still plans to ramp up to hundreds of thousands of preventive doses a month by the end of summer.
"There are always so many moving parts, but we're hitting our best numbers, our best timelines, and things are going really well," Dr. George Yancopoulos, Regeneron's co-founder, president and chief scientific officer, said in a telephone interviewMonday night.
Regeneron is developing the therapy the same way it created a drug for Ebola, which is now under review by the FDA, and four other drugs already on the market: It uses mice genetically engineered to have human-like immune systems. The mice are exposed to a target protein and generate human antibodies in response.
Those antibodies are now used in medicines approved to treat such maladies as asthma, high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.
The approach has been heralded by health experts including former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb as among the most promising for new tools to apply against the novel coronavirus potentially in the fall, when infections could resurge even if they tamp down during the summer.
For COVID-19, the mice were exposed to part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Regeneron said its scientists have now isolated hundreds of antibodies that neutralize the virus, and they're sorting through them as well as antibodies isolated from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to find the best two with which to create a cocktail treatment.
Yancopoulos said Regeneron plans to combine two antibodies because "you want to ensure if, God forbid, there's a mutation or variation in the virus, you don't lose [efficacy] due to that one antibody."
For Ebola, Regeneron used the same approach to create a three-antibody cocktail, which proved life-saving in a clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
The approach to provide treatment and protection in one potential medicine for COVID-19 puts Regeneron somewhere in between the vaccine projects underway at Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, and others, and the hunt for medicines across the industry, including at Gilead Sciences. Yancopoulos said the duration of protection that Regeneron's antibodies could provide is unknown before human studies are run, but extrapolating from earlier experience, they "expect one dose to last at least a month."
The dose needed for protection is a lot less than for treatment after someone is infected, he said, which is why Regeneron's goal of hundreds of thousands of doses by late summer applies to preventive use.
"For every hundred people you 'prophylax,' you can probably treat like five or 10 people," Yancopoulos said.
He noted the first people likely to receive the prophylactic treatment would be health-care workers and others at high risk for the disease. They would likely need a dose once a month until a vaccine conferring longer-term immunity becomes available. (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is leading the nation's COVID-19 vaccine development, has said a vaccine won't be available for a year to 18 months.)
And though Regeneron is meeting its own most optimistic timelines for the project, Yancopoulos said, "it still depends on a lot of things going right. This is biology, not coding or writing an app. There are a lot of things that can still go wrong."
The company also said Monday it is starting clinical trials of its rheumatoid arthritis drug, Kevzara, to treat the severe immune response that can occur in the lungs of patients with COVID-19. Since that drug is already on the market, it could provide an immediate option for the most critical patients, if it's successful.
"We really do feel," Yancopoulos said, "like we've been preparing for years for this opportunity to make a difference."
The immune responses from one of Australia's first coronavirus patients have been mapped, which researchers say is the first step towards finding a vaccine.
Researchers at Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection tested at four different points in time the blood samples of an otherwise healthy woman who was diagnosed with coronavirus.
They were able to record how her immune system responded to COVID-19, and how it was able to overcome the virus.
Laboratory Head Professor Katherine Kedzierska told SBS News the patient's immune response was similar to that of a patient with influenza.
"When we were analysing the immune responses, we saw really textbook images of several different immune cell types emerging in the patient's blood," she said.
"Even though COVID-19 is caused by a new virus, in an otherwise healthy person, we can generate a robust immune response across different cell types."
"This is an important step forward in understanding what drives recovery."
"Now we can do research on understanding what's lacking, or what's different in patients that have fatal disease outcomes."
Scientists from The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity were able to succesfully grow a version of the Coronavirus in January.
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Research fellow Oanh Nguyen said it is the first time broad immune responses to COVID-19 have been reported.
"Three days after the patient was admitted, we saw large populations of several immune cells, which are often a tell-tale sign of recovery during seasonal influenza infection."
"We predicted that the patient would recover in three days, which is what happened."
In January, Doherty Institute researchers became the first outside China to successfully grow the Wuhan Coronavirus from a patient sample.
Now by dissecting the immune response, scientists are a step closer to finding an effective Coronavirus vaccine.
But ProfessorKedzierska said there are "many more questions" scientists are yet to answer.
"We've shown that this patient expressed antibodies, which are obviously important for the vaccine development," she said.
"We still need to understand the nature of those antibodies, whether they can neutralise the virus or not."
And it's too early to tell if patients who've had the Coronavirus are immune from future infections.
"We need to understand whether those immune responses can proceed into immunological memory[and whether] we still got those cells that can protect us against reinfection...with the same virus."
The findings were published on Tuesday in a medical journal called Nature Medicine.
Coronavirus symptoms can range from mild illness to pneumonia, according to the Federal Government's website, and can include a fever, coughing, sore throat, fatigue and shortness of breath.
There are now more than 375 coronavirus cases across Australia.
As of Tuesday afternoon, only people who have recently travelled from overseas or have been in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case and experienced symptoms within 14 days are advised to be tested.
If you believe you may have contracted the virus, call your doctor, dont visit, or contact the national Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080.
If you are struggling to breathe or experiencing a medical emergency, call 000.
FREDERICK, Md. The Army Command working on a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment briefed the community Monday in a virtual town hall on Facebook. Officials from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, or USAMRDC, the Barquist Army Health Clinic on Fort Detrick, Frederick Health Hospital near the base and other groups answered questions and gave updates about concerns surrounding COVID-19.
Leaders of USAMRDC reported a task force with multiple laboratories within the command is meeting daily. They are looking at preventing, detecting and treating COVID-19.
According to USAMRDC, theyre doing everything ranging from validating testing kits, doing some early vaccine work and looking at therapeutics for COVID-19.
The work is done in partnership with other government agencies, as part of the larger response to COVID-19.
Frederick Health Hospital is looking to set up a drive-through testing site. They are hoping to have that running sometimes in by the middle or end of this week and plan to follow the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for who should be tested.
With allergy season approaching, we want to make sure you're aware of the differences in symptoms between them, Coronavirus and the Flu.
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On Fort Detrick, currently, there are no plans to start testing people at the visitors center. Right now, officials reported no confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the Fort Detrick community.
RELATED: 'We're getting very good at this' | Military researchers talk COVID-19 vaccine work at Pentagon
Leaders attempted a calming tone for this virtual town hall. They asked those listening to be patient, remind them things will change on a daily basis, so the advice is likely to change. They promised to update the community as this happens.
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Coronavirus or COVID-19 cureis still under a long process for now. This is what Global Health Official revealed on Bloomberg in an exclusive interview when he was asked about the real status of theviruscure in the world. Clearly, the official said that there was already a potential cure for the viral disease, but it's now only on Phase 1, which means it still has a long way to go before officially announcing it as the primary COVID-19 cure. What to do now?
(Photo : VIDO-InterVac on Reuters)COVID-19 Cure Still on Phase 1 and Might Take 18 Months From Now to Create Says Global Health Official
Bloomberg recentlyexclusively interviewedArnaud Bernaert, a representative from the World Economic Forum Head of Global Health and Healthcare, and asked him on his personal views regarding the formulation of COVID-19 cure. Bernaert admitted on air that the cure might take a while to create before officially distributing it around the world and claimed it as the cure for the novel virus.
As estimated by Bernaert, the virus cure might take over a year or exactly 18 months--since the medicine is still on Phase 1-- before people will be cured by the formulation.
"You need to understand that Phase 1 means that we only verify that the vaccine is not toxic to humans. It's a state that is very early on the discovery process. You have to remain and demonstrate efficacy and, most importantly, and the vaccine can be manufactured at the scale which is an issue in the context of existing filling capacity for vaccines globally," said him. "I would say it's promising, but it's still a long way, and I tend to agree with clinical experts on that 18 months is a reasonable time frame of seeing a vaccine."
(Photo : KYODO on Reuters)COVID-19 Cure Still on Phase 1 and Might Take 18 Months From Now to Create Says Global Health Official
The Biomedical Advanced, Research and Development Authority, wassaidto be working with pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson on creating potential vaccines against the disease. They were supposed to be the company that already reached phase 1 of getting the cure.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci already said that finding the cure for the Coronavirus is their main priority for today and having the phase 1 of the clinical trial of the potential vaccine will be a huge help for their discovery.
"Finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 is an urgent public health priority," said him in a statement. "This Phase 1 study, launched in record speed, is an important first step toward achieving that goal."
As of now, authorities around the world are still advising all citizens to be aware of proper hygiene on their residences to protect themselves from getting the virus.
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LOS ANGELES - As fears over the COVID-19 pandemic grow following mass closures across the United States, concerns of scammers attempting to take advantage of the chaotic situation are circulating as confusion and panic spread.
RELATED:CoronavirusNOW.com, FOX launches national hub for COVID-19 news and updates.
The Lucas County Sheriffs Office in Ohio issued a warning to its followers to be on the lookout for con artists claiming to be with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attempting to lure people into reserving a vaccine to prevent COVID-19.
Scammers have been calling people requesting credit card and social security numbers in exchange for reserving a vaccine that currently does not exist, according to the sheriffs office.
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Anyone receiving such a call should not under any circumstances give the caller any personal information or money," the Lucas County Sheriffs Office wrote on their Facebook page.
U.S. researchers gave the first shots in a clinical trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday. But even if the research goes well, a vaccine would not be available for widespread use for 12 to 18 months, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
On March 15, the National Security Council tweeted regarding a concern over fake text message rumors circulating throughout the public about a national quarantine.
On March 6, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert reminding individuals to be wary of possible scams related to the pandemic that has completely upended the social and economic fabric of the world.
Cyber actors may send emails with malicious attachments or links to fraudulent websites to trick victims into revealing sensitive information or donating to fraudulent charities or causes, the organization said. Exercise caution in handling any email with a COVID-19-related subject line, attachment, or hyperlink, and be wary of social media pleas, texts, or calls related to COVID-19.
Carolina Sanchez breaks down what you need to know about this health affliction.
CISA warns against giving away sensitive information over email and advises people to be wary of clicking on any link attachments sent via email.
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CISA said that federal, state, local, tribal and territorial COVID-19 information sites are the best resources for up-to-date information on the pandemic.
The Secret Service said scammers send emails under the guise of a medical official with important information about coronavirus. When the victim lets their guard down and opens an attached file, their computer becomes infected with malware.
The scammer could access the victims passwords and possibly even their financial information.
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In non-delivery schemes, victims are told about an in-demand medical supply that can prevent coronavirus. Once they pay for it, the victim never hears from the seller again or receives a product, the agency said.
Avoid opening attachments and clicking on links within emails from senders you do not recognize, the Secret Service said. These attachments can contain malicious content, such as ransomware, that can infect your device and steal your information.
