The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge the world has faced since the Second World War, said United Nations’ Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He spoke during the launch of a report on the potential socioeconomic impact of the outbreak, Shared Responsibility, Global Solidarity.  Speaking from the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Guterres said that […] 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 ->
The World Health Organization has received more than US $622 million of a US $675 million ask to fund WHO’s first Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan for COVID-19, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.  “We continue to be encouraged by the signs of global solidarity to confront and overcome this common threat,” […] 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 ->
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 ->
Costa Rica’s president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada has appealed to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, to “pool rights to technologies that are useful for the detection, prevention, control and treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic”. The presidential letter dated Monday, 23 March, and co-signed by Minister of Health, Daniel Salas Peraza, […] Continue reading ->
As the explosive impact of COVID-19 ripples globally, there’s a clear plea from many regions and countries: stay home and help “flatten the curve” of infection. People from China to Italy have seen the consequences of the virus spreading too quickly with hospitals overwhelmed and doctors forced to make heartbreaking decisions about who lives and […] Continue reading ->
US Food & Drug Administration authorization of a rapid COVID-19 test on the GeneXpert platform, one of the most widely-used TB diagnostic tools in the world, could be the first crack in the doorway to wider testing capacity in low- and middle-income countries, leading TB advocates told Health Policy Watch.  There are some 23,000 GeneXpert […] Continue reading ->