24 June 2020 (Cape Town, South Africa) – From today, South Africans volunteers will join thousands of people in the UK, US and Brazil in testing a COVID-19 candidate vaccine developed by the Oxford Jenner Institute. The South African Ox1Cov-19 Vaccine VIDA-Trial will involve 2,000 people, including 50 people living with HIV, in a collaboration […] Continue reading ->
To mark Olympic Day, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched a partnership with the WHO and the UN to inspire healthy behavior around the world, announced a WHO statement on Tuesday. As COVID-19 upends daily routines and lives around the world, we need to pay attention to our own mental and physical health and help […] Continue reading ->
19 June 2020 (Ibadan, Nigeria) – We are at war with COVID-19, a war we must win to survive, said Dr John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, on Friday at a workshop on “Home-Grown Solutions to the COVID-19 Health Crisis,” hosted by the United Nations Development Programme. Since the continent’s first confirmed […] Continue reading ->
A standardized set of more than 80 compounds with known or predicted activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been compiled by the Medicines for Malaria Venture in an effort to catalyze the discovery of drugs for the disease. The announcement comes amidst rapid shifts in the research around potential COVID-19 treatments. Just […] Continue reading ->
A rising star in the COVID-19 treatment arena, dexamethasone – a powerful corticosteroid – has stirred excitement among World Health Organization experts and researchers around the world, following the publication of promising early results from the United Kingdom’s Recovery trial. In COVID-19 patients only receiving supplemental oxygen, the trial found that dexamethasone reduced mortality by […] Continue reading ->
A major clinical trial ongoing in the United Kingdom has fingered dexamethasone, a common anti-inflammatory drug used to treat arthritis and asthma, as the “first” treatment to actually reduce mortality among COVID-19 patients – by as much as one-third. The preliminary findings were announced by the trial’s principal investigators, Martin Landray and Peter Horby, both […] Continue reading ->
The early resignation of Roberto Azevedo from the post of Director General (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), sets the stage for a highly politicized competition over his successor – who will face a major challenge in demands to reshape the WTO in the wake of repeated US complaints about its trade dispute rulings […] Continue reading ->
African countries are lifting lockdowns even as COVID-19 cases across the continent reached a grim new milestone, topping 200,000 cases. The pandemic took only 19 days to reach 200,000 cases in Africa, while it took 98 days to reach the first 100,000 cases. Yet carefully easing lockdown orders in Africa may be the right move […] Continue reading ->
In a series of flip-flops on Friday, the United Kingdom suspended the enrollment of new patients into the hydroxychloroquine arm of its massive RECOVERY trial, one of the largest randomised COVID-19 clinical trials in the world, after preliminary data showed “no benefit” for COVID-19 patients receiving the drug. The suspension of the trial came just […] Continue reading ->
A day ahead of a major pledging event, Gavi-the Vaccine Alliance has received some US $70 million in pledges from a broad range of corporations, foundations, initiatives and individual philanthropists to modernise, streamline and strengthen its delivery of vaccines to children in the world’s poorest countries over the next 15 years. Meanwhile, Médecins sans Frontières […] Continue reading ->