Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

BERLIN, June 19 (Reuters) - The first trial results of a coronavirus vaccine being developed by CureVac are expected in two months, German news website Focus Online reported on Friday.

CureVac, an unlisted German company, this week said first meaningful results could be available in September or October and, under favourable conditions, it could be approved by the middle of next year. (Reporting by Thomas Seythal; editing by John Stonestreet)

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First results of CureVac COVID-19 vaccine trial expected in 2 months -Focus - Reuters

BALTIMORE (WJZ) When President Donald Trump announced Operation Warp Speed in mid-May, it was defined as a national objective to finish developing and then to manufacture and distribute a proven coronavirus vaccine as fast as possible.

Part of the operation is now taking place in Baltimore, at one facility belonging to Emergent BioSolutions.

Its one of ten facilities throughout the country, but its facility in Baltimore is becoming one of the most productive in the nation.

Thats because this facility was created to manufacture vaccines.

Emergent announced this week it has partnered with the biopharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca to make that companys coronavirus vaccine.

Syed Husain, Emergents senior vice president, said within the next few weeks, its Baltimore facility will be producing Astra Zenecas vaccine for clinical trials that could lead to FDA approval.

They have the vaccine, we have factories and people that are ready to step up and do our part, he said.

This is the fourth company, including Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine will be made at Emergents Baltimore location.

Husan said this will pave the way for multiple potential vaccines to be solutions,

His employees are working 24/7 at warp speed inching closer to a cure for COVID-19.

For the latest information on coronavirus go to the Maryland Health Departments website or call 211. You can find all of WJZs coverage on coronavirus in Maryland here.

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Baltimore Factory Working Around The Clock To Produce COVID-19 Vaccine - CBS Baltimore

The Trump administration says it will make an eventual COVID-19 vaccine available for free to virtually anyone in the United States who wants it.

Insurance companies are expected to cover the vaccine for most Americans, according to a senior administration official at a briefing Tuesday to discuss the government's efforts to develop a vaccine by the end of the year.

For those who are not insured, the official added, "Our role as the federal government is to ensure anyone who is vulnerable, cannot afford it and desires it gets it."

The official said Americans would get any vaccine produced with federal funding before it would be made available to other countries.

"Our priorities are very clear. Let's take care of Americans first," the official said.

"To the extent there is surplus, we have an interest in ensuring folks around the world are vaccinated," since the virus arrived through international travel, he noted.

Other countries are signing separate contracts to manufacture the vaccine elsewhere, he said.

"In no way are we inhibiting through our contracts those vaccines from getting to others around the world," the official added.

As part of Operation Warp Speed, the administration is aiming to deliver 300 million doses of a vaccine by January 2021. Vaccines typically take a decade or more to develop.

Government contracts

The government has announced more than $3 billion in contracts to back companies in testing, manufacturing and distributing a vaccine. Congress has appropriated nearly $10 billion to develop vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for COVID-19.

The pandemic and lockdowns aimed at staunching the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have devastated economies around the world. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. economy will shrink by 11% in the second quarter of 2020 alone.

"While we're investing billions of dollars in this effort, it's to address a multitrillion-dollar challenge," the official said, who could not be identified according to ground rules for the briefing.

Fourteen vaccine candidates have been chosen from more than 100 in development. The government said it will select the most promising seven for clinical trials.

President Donald Trump's administration has already announced support for candidates produced by three companies: Moderna, which entered the first phase of the three-step clinical trial process in mid-March; Johnson & Johnson, which plans to start phase 1 testing this summer; and AstraZeneca, which is entering the final, large-scale testing phase this summer with a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford. The administration says this vaccine could be available as soon as October if it works.

Federal funding is going toward building manufacturing capacity at the same time as vaccine candidates undergo testing, so that whatever vaccine proves safe and effective can be distributed as soon as possible.

The government has also signed contracts with companies that make the vials and syringes to package vaccines.

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COVID-19 Vaccine to Be Free in US, Official Says - Voice of America

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore scientists testing a COVID-19 vaccine from U.S. firm Arcturus Therapeutics (ARCT.O) plan to start human trials in August after promising initial responses in mice.

FILE PHOTO: A researcher works in a lab at the Duke-NUS Medical School, which is developing a way to track genetic changes that speed testing of vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Singapore March 23, 2020. REUTERS/Joseph Campbell

More than 100 vaccines are being developed globally, including several already in human trials from the likes of AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Pfizer (PFE.N), to try and control a disease that has infected more than 8 million people and killed over 430,000 worldwide.

The vaccine being evaluated by Singapores Duke-NUS Medical School works on the relatively-untested Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which instructs human cells to make specific coronavirus proteins that produce an immune response.

The fact that it replicates and triggers a very balanced immune response, both in terms of the antibody and killer cells - those are welcome properties, Ooi Eng Eong, deputy director of the schools emerging infectious diseases programme, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Antibodies stick to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells, while killer cells, another arm of the immune system, recognise infected cells and destroy them, he said.

The mRNA approach has not yet been approved for any medicine so its backers, which also include U.S. biotech firm Moderna (MRNA.O), are treading uncharted territory.

Because of that, Ooi said longer studies were needed to ensure its safety.

The most optimistic case is that its about this time next year, that we will have a vaccine, Ooi said.

Ooi is also working on a monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 and will begin safety trials on healthy people this week, before testing on COVID-19 patients in the coming months.

Ooi said potential deployment of the treatment could be faster than the vaccine, without giving an exact timeline.

Antibodies are generated in the body to fight off infection. Monoclonal antibodies mimic natural antibodies and can be isolated and manufactured in large quantities to treat diseases.

Tiny city-state Singapore has one of the highest infection tallies in Asia, with more than 40,000 cases, largely due to mass outbreaks in dormitories for its migrant workers.

Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Editing by Himani Sarkar

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Singapore scientists to start human trials of COVID-19 vaccine in August - Reuters

As multiple companies inch closer to a potentially life-saving vaccine for the coronavirus, cybercriminals with varying motives have increased attacks.

Image: howtogoto, Getty Images/iStockphoto

Governments, companies and educational institutions around the world have banded together to come up with a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19. But efforts to collectively come up with a cure have been undermined by a diverse array of cyberattacks from government actors looking to outright steal information about potential vaccines.

SEE: Coronavirus: Critical IT policies and tools every business needs (TechRepublic Premium)

Over the last three months, there have been multiple reported government-led cyberattacks on COVID-19 research teams and facilities, between adversaries and allies.

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency caused waves in May when they outright accused China of spearheading multiple attacks in search of COVID-19 research but since then a number of reports have come out showing the problem is far more widespread.

Vietnamese hackers went after China's Ministry of Emergency Management and Wuhan officials looking for more information on potential COVID-19 treatments, while Iranian cyberteams were caught trying to digitally break into Gilead Sciences, maker of the therapeutic drug Remdesivir, which was recently given the green light by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials.

SEE: Life after lockdown: Your office job will never be the same--here's what to expect (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Google released a report highlighting the growth in attacks that healthcare organizations were facing by governments looking for cures. Organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are seeing fivefold increases in cyberattacks coming from places like South Korea and teams across South America.

A European biotech source for Reuters told the news outlet that many of the companies working on COVID-19 vaccines, cures and treatments are now forced to work on air-gapped computers without access to the internet to protect the research.

During a webinar with CISO MAG earlier this month, Bryan Ware, assistant director for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the attacks being led by the Chinese government were "hindering vaccine development in the US," and the government body released its own memo to vaccine researchers urging them to beef up defenses.

"APT (Advanced persistent threat) groups frequently target such organizations in order to steal sensitive research data and intellectual property for commercial and state benefit. Organizations involved in COVID-19-related research are attractive targets for APT actors looking to obtain information for their domestic research efforts into COVID-19-related medicine," the government agency reported in a joint alert with the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre.

"These organizations' global reach and international supply chains increase exposure to malicious cyber actors. Actors view supply chains as a weak link that they can exploit to obtain access to better-protected targets. Many supply chain elements have also been affected by the shift to remote working and the new vulnerabilities that have resulted."

SEE: Cybersecurity: Let's get tactical (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The release adds that multiple government cyberattackers have been caught looking at the external websites of targeted companies and looking for vulnerabilities in unpatched software, specifically a vulnerability with Citrix and others with virtual private network (VPN) products.

Chris Pierson, who spent nine years on the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee & Cybersecurity Subcommittee at the Department of Homeland Security, said his cybersecurity company BlackCloak has onboarded several different corporate executive groups that are in the pharmaceutical and healthcare fields in the past four weeks because of the amount of attacks they've been getting.

"We've already equaled or exceeded last year's numbers in terms of attacks. I only think it's going to get worse. It's such a hot area. If you think about it, the amount of research and development money that is being spent by the pharmaceutical industry right now is probably at an all-time high to rush to a vaccine or a treatment or some type of therapy that will lessen the impacts of COVID-19. Literally lives are on the line," Pierson said.

"This is a fertile hunting ground for nation-states to be able to use and steal the IP and R&D from these companies and use it themselves, potentially to beat another company to the solution. With so many folks so strained as a result of COVID-19 remote work, there is a higher chance for there to be a weakening in cyberdefenses."

Pierson noted that now is a perfect time for cyberattackers to hit companies because the workforce is distributed, giving them a wider attack surface.

This has created a two-fold problem for researchers, scientists, and healthcare executives because state actors can now infiltrate home networks through the devices of family members or children. Pierson explained that BlackCloak conducted research that showed 68% of the top executives from the main 20-30 pharmaceutical companies already have credentials exposed on the dark web from other data breaches. A number of the credentials included emails and passwords coming from a LinkedIn breach in 2015.

SEE: Zero trust security: A cheat sheet (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Pierson noted that most executives reused the same passwords over years in both personal and work accounts.

Mick Jenkins, CISO of Brunel University in the United Kingdom, said it was difficult for organizations to know what kind of cyber defense was necessary because each institution had a different level of maturity in terms of security.

Jenkins previously worked for the UK government and said there are "battalions of people" working on hacking COVID-19 research institutions and vaccine researchers. These groups start by looking at the easiest way into organizations by looking through all the people that work there.

Once they have a few targets, they may decide to try phishing emails or an "RDP" as well as password spraying before trying to move laterally within the organization.

"They're harvesting usernames, email addresses, and passwords from prior breaches. They may have your Gmail username and password, and they're going to try to figure out your work email address and automate the spray of that against a public website, VPN or an email," said Steve Moore, chief security strategist at cybersecurity company Exabeam.

"They're going to see if those commonly used passwords work. If I were in charge, I would want to monitor the use of credentials both on the edge and internal to my company, so credential behavior. Anything that just has a username and password only will be stolen and reused. If it doesn't have some other factor to it, ideally adaptive authentication, it's no good."

In the academic sector, the level of cybersecurity varied greatly but Jenkins said the current climate was a perfect example of why now more than ever, people should understand that cybersecurity comes down to every COVID-19 researcher, doctor, and consultant.

SEE: Security expert weighs in on cybersecurity regulation and ransomware attacks of US cities (TechRepublic)

"The stakes are high here across the globe, and we know everyone is looking for an advantage with a vaccine, including the big players in espionage like Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. Organizations need to have security briefings so people know that if they get contacted, they should report it," Jenkins said. "They also need compartmentalized portals where access control is very rigorous. The research data that is being generated should be protected in a safe data haven through various different cyber techniques but access control needs to be rigorous."

Governments are also doing their part, providing in-depth cybersecurity guidance to universities, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions for their work on sensitive topics like COVID-19.

Moore said the number of phishing emails they are seeing have risen significantly in healthcare companies.

"Many countries are doing this because they all need an edge. Is there a treatment method that's better? Is a saliva or nasal swab better? What's the data say? All of these countries want a head start," he said. "This is the first-world event we've had that is affecting everyone, so the stakes are high."

A number of cybersecurity experts said the increase in attacks related to COVID-19 research was an indicator that digital security now needed to take a prominent role in how all organizations build.

Cybersecurity teams need to be adaptive and responsive to threats while also managing detection and mitigation, according to Joe McMann, North America Cyberstrategy lead for cybersecurity company Capgemini.

Every university and healthcare organization should have a firm understanding of every asset, where it is, and what is being done to protect it, McMann added. As noted by the FBI and CISA, patching, access management and multi-factor authentication were all extremely important.

Jenkins added that organizations need to have a platform that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and automation while giving visibility across an entire environment. Anyone working with high-value data should be operating in a zero-trust environment, he said.

Moore added that companies should know what their time-to-answer is for their cybersecurity teams because you may be able to mitigate the problem depending on how fast you can contain an attack. Automation is also key because there are generally too many threats for people to handle.

"What has happened is the overall activity has increased. That's normal with any significant world event, but the status in the world of pharmaceutical or medical research has changed a bit," McMann said. "They've always been a piece of the critical infrastructure and always fulfilled an important role in society but right now it's heightened, so the risk they face has shifted."

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Cybercriminals unleash diverse wave of attacks on COVID-19 vaccine researchers - TechRepublic

It Will Be Several Years Before COVID-19 Vaccine Is Available to Everyone, Doctor Leading Global Efforts Says  Newsweek

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It Will Be Several Years Before COVID-19 Vaccine Is Available to Everyone, Doctor Leading Global Efforts Says - Newsweek

Good morning, everyone, and how are you today? We are doing just fine, thank you, despite the general uncertainty these days. After all, the birds are still chirping and a cool breeze is wafting by. Moreover, this marks the middle of the week, which means we have managed to persevere this far. And this calls for celebration, yes? So please join us as we hoist another cup of delicious stimulation. Remember, no prescription is required. Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest. Have a grand day, and drop us a line if you hear something saucy.

The European Commission called for global leaders to cooperate to buy bulk quantities of potential Covid-19 vaccines to avoid harmful competition and ensure any future vaccine is available to poor countries, Reuters reports. With a dozen potential vaccines now in human trials, rich countries are rushing to buy doses in advance from drug makers to ensure supplies should any prove successful. The European Commission is worried this could raise prices for everyone and also leave many countries, mostly poor ones, struggling to obtain a supply.

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STAT Plus is STAT's premium subscription service for in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis.Our award-winning team covers news on Wall Street, policy developments in Washington, early science breakthroughs and clinical trial results, and health care disruption in Silicon Valley and beyond.

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White House says Covid-19 vaccine will be free to the 'vulnerable' - STAT

ODMs in aggregate account for the largest portion of the public cloud market, in terms of market share, with Dell ISG being the leading individual vendor, followed by Microsoft, Inspur and Cisco.

New data shows worldwide spend on data centre hardware and software declined by 2% from the first quarter of 2019 as the market was impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, according to Synergy Research Group.

The research group said that the pandemic had relatively little impact on public cloud data centre infrastructure, where hardware and software vendors saw their revenues increase by 3%, but sales to enterprises and traditional service providers declined by 4%.

The Q1 market leader in enterprise infrastructure was Microsoft, followed by Dell, HPE, Cisco and VMware.

Total data centre infrastructure equipment revenues, including both cloud and non-cloud, hardware and software, were $35.8 billion in Q1, with public cloud infrastructure accounting for over 37% of the total.

The main hardware-oriented segments of servers, storage and networking in aggregate accounted for 73% of the data centre infrastructure market. OS, virtualization software, cloud management and network security account for the balance, according to the data.

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By segment, Dell is the leader in both server and storage revenues, while Cisco is dominant in the networking segment.

Microsoft features heavily in the rankings due to its position in server OS and virtualization applications. Outside of these three, the other leading vendors in the market are HPE, VMware, Inspur, Huawei, IBM, Lenovo and NetApp. Inspur is the major vendor with the highest growth rate.

Cloud service revenues continue to grow by almost 40% per year, enterprise SaaS revenues are growing by almost 25%, search/social networking revenues are growing by over 15%, and e-commerce revenues are growing by over 20%, all of which are helping to drive growth and increased spending on public cloud infrastructure, said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group.

Notably, most of these services are either little impacted by COVID-19 or may be stimulated by changed enterprise and consumer behaviour.

On the other hand, many enterprises have been negatively impacted by the pandemic resulting in increased pressure on capital budgets and more impetus on shifting workloads to public cloud providers.

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Salesforce and Isobar back Covid-19 vaccination funding - Data Economy

Insurers generally have a strong financial interest in covering vaccines, seeing them as a win-win.

WASHINGTON U.S. officials say they expect health insurance companies will cover vaccines for COVID-19 without charging copays, once those vaccines are developed and become available.

At a briefing for reporters Tuesday, a senior Trump administration official said the government has been talking with insurers about offering vaccines at no cost to patients. The industry earlier made a similar commitment to cover testing for the coronavirus without charging copays.

The White House has launched an initiative to quickly manufacture millions of doses of COVID vaccines, once the Food and Drug Administration approves one or more formulations. Candidate vaccines are in early trials, and the goal considered ambitious is to have 300 million doses by early next year.

Senior administration officials provided an overview of that effort on Tuesday on condition that they not be publicly identified. The White House initiative, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, is a joint project of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Pentagon, under the overall direction of HHS.

Insurers generally have a strong financial interest in covering vaccines, seeing them as a win-win. Vaccination helps the insurers' customers stay healthy, and preventing disease saves the companies money.

In the case of preventive services, it goes beyond financial incentives. Insurers are also required by the Affordable Care Act to provide coverage at no charge to patients. A range of screening tests, immunizations and birth control for women are already covered under the Obama-era law. President Donald Trump is still pressing to overturn Obamacare as unconstitutional.

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US expects insurers to cover COVID vaccine without copays - WTSP.com

Then came the novel coronavirus, which began in China and has inflicted its worst damage in the US. Each government has pointed fingers at the other to deflect criticism of its own COVID failings.

How might the pandemic, and its aftermath, alter the rivalry between the world's two largest economies?

China's COVID initiative In some ways, coronavirus has boosted China's international image. Its success in containing the virus, the relative COVID chaos in the US and Europe, and China's willingness to help struggling governments, even in Europe, with critical medical supplies and cash, has allowed Beijing to claim a crisis leadership role that once fell to Washington. Meanwhile, China's economic growth looks to be less affected by the pandemic, as the IMF predicts Chinese GDP will continue to expand this year, even while America's contracts.

Continuing US advantages China's rise doesn't imply a post-COVID US decline. In fact, though COVID has wreaked political and economic havoc in the United States, and government dysfunction is a large and growing problem, the US has lasting advantages that gives it staying power as a central international actor.

The US has long been the world's number one food exporter, and game-changing innovations in energy production have made the US the world's top oil producer. In addition, dollar dominance won't last forever, but today's governments still need greenbacks, allowing the US to continue borrowing as no other country can.

But the biggest post-COVID US advantage is the current dominance of its tech companies. That's why technology is the arena where the post-COVID US-China rivalry will become most intense.

The tech battlefield Today, 11 of the world's 13 largest internet companies are US-based, and the US produces more of the tech startups that will drive innovation in the AI and other cutting-edge technologies that will soon dominate global economic development. COVID enhances those US advantages, because contact tracing, immunity passports, and remote work, enabled by new technologies that US companies have a jump on, are now more important.

Chinese companies, with priority backing from their government, are working in all these same areas and will continue to make progress, and China's government is going all in to make China a technology superpower over the next decade.

Which country will assume the lead in the race for 5G? Will one country gain an insurmountable advantage that allows its regulators to write the rules that govern these technologies? That will be the US-China battleground where the stakes are highest.

The election wildcard The outcome of the US elections in November will also mark a turning point in US-China relations. On the one hand, no matter who wins, Washington and Beijing will remain on a collision course: opposition to some of China's trade practices and the ways it uses data to limit individual freedom are rare issues on which Democrats and Republicans agree. And the US public's distrust of China is at its highest level since polling on the issue began 15 years ago.

If President Trump wins re-election, he's likely to continue the current aggressive unilateral US approach on trade and intellectual property questions. But a President Biden would likely be much more inclined to coordinate pressure on China with likeminded traditional allies in Europe and Asia. That's why Chinese officials may have more to fear from Biden's alliance-building than from Trump's more impulsive go-it-alone approach. If so, a Biden win might ease the tone of the rivalry in the near-term, but broaden and deepen its substance over time.

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The Graphic Truth: Competing and cooperating on a COVID-19 vaccine - GZERO Media