Evercore ISI assembled a dozen internal specialists for a webinar to talk about COVID-19 from a variety of perspectives, with opinions aplenty on transmission route, up-and-coming treatment prospects, and problems in how testing procedures are understood – or not.
Evercore ISI assembled a dozen internal specialists for a webinar to talk about COVID-19 from a variety of perspectives, with opinions aplenty on transmission route, up-and-coming treatment prospects, and problems in how testing procedures are understood – or not.
Following a public backlash to Monday’s news that the FDA had granted Gilead Sciences Inc. an orphan drug designation for remdesivir, an antiviral in development to treat COVID-19, the Foster City, Calif., company is taking the unprecedented step of rescinding its request for the designation.
The first attempt at using existing drugs to treat patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 has yielded disappointing results. In 200 hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19, a 14-day regimen of twice-daily treatment with Kaletra/Aluvia (lopinavir/ritonavir, Abbvie Inc.) did not hasten recovery when added to the standard of care.
BEIJING – While repurposing drugs may be a quick solution to an epidemic like COVID-19 that has a limited research window, it’s just luck as to whether an already available drug candidate exists for newly emergent diseases. Experts say it’s more realistic to develop better drugs instead of attempting to repurpose old ones.
BEIJING – While repurposing drugs may be a quick solution to an epidemic like COVID-19 that has a limited research window, it’s just luck as to whether an already available drug candidate exists for newly emergent diseases. Experts say it’s more realistic to develop better drugs instead of attempting to repurpose old ones.
“The FDA is keenly aware that the outbreak will likely affect the medical product supply chain, including potential disruption to supplier shortages of critical medical products in the U.S.,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said Tuesday, Feb. 25, during a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) briefing on the COVID-19 outbreak.
Although the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged COVID-19 is spreading, they say it has not yet reached pandemic disease status. The statement did little to comfort the nerves of investors Feb. 24 as they exited global markets big time in the wake of an eruption of new infections in Italy, Iran and South Korea.
At this very early point in the emerging 2019-nCoV outbreak, knowledge about the virus is insufficient to predict what shape that outbreak will ultimately take.
