According to BioWorld, almost $85 billion was raised by public and private biopharma companies globally in the second and third quarters alone, bringing the dollars generated to date to more than $100 billion – a total that smashes the existing record of about $69 billion that was raised in 2015.

LONDON – Clinical care guidelines recommending the use of the HIV/AIDS combination lopinavir-ritonavir for the treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 must now be updated, say the authors of a paper reporting the full results of a randomized U.K. study showing the antiviral is not effective in this context, published in The Lancet on Oct. 5.

TORONTO – Health Canada has approved a portable COVID-19 test kit which began as a testing regime for identifying pathogens, microbes and viruses in the European food and natural products industry. The Hyris Bcube developed by Guelph, Ontario-based Songbird Life Science Inc., in partnership with London, U.K.’s Hyris Ltd., is described as a portable DNA-based “laboratory in a box” for coronavirus testing in large urban spaces as well as more remote, indigenous communities in Canada’s north.

The COVID-19 pandemic has done little to encourage bipartisan comity in Washington, and the Oct. 2 hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reflected that partisan tension. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar noted, however, that the department is doing its best to cooperate with oversight of the vaccine program by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), but that the nearly three dozen GAO requests for oversight have come at a difficult time.