TORONTO – A distinguished Canadian health care policy expert said a report from Canada’s COVID-19 Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel recommending testing and screening for school-age children and teachers comes “late in the game” now that the focus has shifted to vaccinating the Canadian population.

Fluxergy Inc. said Thursday that it has won CE-IVD marking for its one-hour COVID-19 real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. The automated, sample-to-action Fluxergy diagnostic testing system can run multiple assay types – such as molecular, immunochemistry, chemistry and cytometry – simultaneously on the same cartridge. The SARS-CoV2 RT-PCR test is the first CE-marked product for the Fluxergy diagnostic platform.

LONDON – After the extraordinary public accusation by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that it published “outdated” information on the interim results of the phase III U.S. trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, Astrazeneca plc has rushed through the full primary analysis, showing 76% efficacy in preventing symptomatic disease. That is 3% lower than the headline figure in the interim data published on March 22. But with the confidence interval ranging from 68%-82%, it is consistent with the pre-specified interim analysis claim of 79% efficacy – and would appear to indicate the data safety monitoring board’s (DSMB) concern that the company, “may have provided an incomplete view,” was misplaced.