Fidget spinners are hand-held toys based on a roller bearing and three weighted lobes, which can spin freely, creating centrifugal force when activated manually.
LONDON – Support is growing for human challenge trials in COVID-19 to be approved in order to speed up development of effective vaccines against the pandemic infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released guidelines for assessing the ethical acceptability, saying such trials would allow for more rapid and standardized testing, accelerating development and enabling candidates to be prioritized.
HONG KONG – Japan has become the first country in the world to approve Veklury (remdesivir), Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental drug, to treat COVID-19. The fast approval was based on U.S. data and that country’s emergency use of the drug to tackle the pandemic, although it is unclear whether the drug is safe or effective for treating COVID-19.
LONDON – The World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global collaboration to accelerate development and production of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
HONG KONG – South Korea’s Osang Healthcare Co. Ltd. became the first Korean company to receive the U.S. FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 test kit.
There will be lessons learned aplenty when the COVID-19 pandemic finally breaks, including how serological and molecular testing can be used to maximum effect to corral a future pandemic.
HONG KONG – Korean biopharma Celltrion Inc. said it’s halfway through the process of creating a super antibody to reign in the COVID-19 novel coronavirus that has claimed almost 13,000 lives globally.
Business as usual only three months ago has transformed into health care industry overdrive as biopharma and med-tech companies scramble to test and scale-up treatments, vaccines and diagnostics to address COVID-19.
The past week has seen a lot of movement in terms of tests to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “It is notable that the diagnostics community is coming together in a way we have not seen in our 20 years covering this industry,” wrote William Blair analyst Brian Weinstein in a March 14 note. “Regulators, lab professionals, and manufacturers are all in a frenetic fury to try and get testing up and running, and we generally see a sense of ‘in it together’ playing out.”
LONDON – The EU launched a “Corona” response team, bringing together oversight of all the separate strands put in place to control the virus, as the infection spread to 18 of 27 member states, with 2,100 confirmed cases and 31 deaths.