The European Medicines Agency on Friday issued new guidance supporting the use of Gilead Sciences’ antiviral remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment under compassionate use programmes. The new EMA guidelines on remdesivir recommend its compassionate use  in adult COVID-19 patients experiencing severe disease requiring invasive mechanical ventilation. Such compassionate use programmes are set up by individual […] Continue reading ->
A new study examining data from nearly 90% of mainland China’s confirmed COVID-19 cases found that the death rate among people older than 80 was 13.4%, as compared to only .32% for people under the age of 60. Almost one in five patients over the age of 80 were likely to require hospitalisation, as compared […] Continue reading ->
Some 33 Members of the European Parliament released an open letter Friday urging top leadership in the European Commission (EC) to prohibit exclusive licensing for COVID-19 products developed with European Union (EU) grants, and demanding transparency in the research and development pipeline to ensure affordability commitments are met.  In a separate letter signed by 37 […] Continue reading ->
World Health Organization Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has welcomed the call by Costa Rica’s President, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, for WHO to launch an initiative that would “pool rights to technologies that are useful for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic.” “I welcome his initiative & call for pooled rights […] Continue reading ->

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In normal times, Diego Zapata, undersecretary in the City of Medellin’s Mobility Department, worries about how to advance better public transit systems, cycling and pedestrian networks – to get more people moving around the city. But recently, he and his boss Carlos Cadena began supporting the City’s Health Department in its scramble to reduce travel […] Continue reading ->
The US Food and Drug Administration granted investigational emergency use approval for convalescent blood plasma as a potential COVID-19 treatment on Tuesday.  Cloned antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients showed impressive ability to neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the disease, in cell cultures, according to a paper published Wednesday on the preprint server BioRxiv. Two of […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization announced on Wednesday a global “SOLIDARITY Trial” to generate a large, robust study comparing potential treatments for COVID-19. Currently there are 522 trials listed on WHO’s Clinical Trial registry under “COVID-19.” “Multiple small trials with different methodologies may not give us the clear, strong evidence we need about which treatments help to […] Continue reading ->
Europe has now become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined, apart from China, said WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Even more worrisome, there are now more new cases being reported everyday in Europe, which has a population of about 741 million […] Continue reading ->
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Mastercard on Tuesday announced a US $125 million commitment of seed funding to a new COVID-19 Treatment Accelerator – whose aim as its name implies, will be to speed up the development of urgently needed drugs to treat people infected with COVID-19. Just hours later, the […] Continue reading ->
[Medicines for Malaria Venture] EDCTP grants the PAMAfrica research consortium €21.9 million over a 5 year period; MMV, Novartis and other partners will provide an additional €22 million. The PAMAfrica consortium brings together a global medicines company, a not-for-profit product development partnership and leading academic institutions in Africa and Europe. PAMAfrica aims to develop new […] Continue reading ->