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A proposed COVID-19 appropriations bill released on Monday by U.S. Senate Republicans takes solid steps toward providing urgently needed relief and resources, but it also falls short of necessary responses, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine... Read More »
At sites across the United States, a phase 3 trial of the investigational vaccine mRNA-1273, jointly developed by Moderna, Inc. and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is set to enroll 30,000 volunteers for testing.
Anyone 18 years of age and older, who does not... Read More »
A LabCorp COVID-19 diagnostic test became the first of its kind to gain a United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (EUA) last week, for its potential to diagnose COVID-19 infections in those without symptoms.
An EUA was also granted to allow its use in pooled... Read More »
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) awarded a $4.9 million contact to the Pall Corp. last week for efforts to expand the domestic industrial base capacity for medical ventilator filters.
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare a critical need for ventilators in the U.S., but over the... Read More »
Progress on protecting nuclear materials and facilities against theft and sabotage has slowed significantly over the past two years, the Nuclear Threat Initiativeʻs 2020 NTI Nuclear Security Index has found.
The decline in the rate of improvement to national regulatory structures and the global... Read More »
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI) has extended a call for proposals on COVID-19 vaccines until September, pushing for licensure, efficacy and safety in quick order: a timeframe of just 12-18 months.
The coalition is working to guarantee that manufacturing capabilities and capacities... Read More »
Up to 600 million doses of a vaccine candidate produced by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech could be acquired by the United States government under a deal penned this week.
All of this would be conditional on the vaccine’s successful manufacture and either Emergency Use Authorization or licensure... Read More »
CureVac and GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) have signed an agreement to work together on the research, development, manufacturing, and marketing of as many as five mRNA-based vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for use against infectious diseases.
By collaborating, CureVac gains access to GSK’s mRNA... Read More »
Several biopharmaceutical companies are working in unprecedented fashion to develop, manufacture and deliver a safe and effective vaccine to combat COVID-19 as soon as is humanly possible.
Executives from five companies developing COVID-19 vaccine candidates — AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson &... Read More »
A group of U.S. Senators recently called on Congress to provide at least $5.6 billion in federal funding to support the COVID-19 vaccine infrastructure.
The funding -- needed to boost the country’s vaccine supply and distribution system -- should be included in the next coronavirus relief... Read More »
While treatments for COVID-19 remain under research, Novartis announced a new initiative for low- and middle-income countries this week that will supply 15 generic and over-the-counter medicines at zero-profit as a way of treating symptoms.
The policy is only meant as a hold-over until a vaccine... Read More »
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), along with other infectious disease associations, are opposed to the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The decision will weaken the nation’s ability to control the... Read More »
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation on Wednesday to strengthen public health security by bolstering the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and boosting the domestic manufacturing of medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bipartisan Strengthening... Read More »
Sandia National Laboratories is turning to machine learning to assist COVID-19 researchers in combing through existing coronavirus studies and data.
Through a mix of algorithms, analytics, and data mining, Sandia wants to make it easy for scientists to find the data they need right at their... Read More »
Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) seek answers from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on its process to determine the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic and serological tests.
“Public health experts have consistently called for increased access to... Read More »
U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) is sponsoring a bill that would establish limits on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
The 2001 AUMF — which passed in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks — has been used by presidential administrations to deploy American... Read More »
The executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) voted to condemn the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Arab Republic in 2017.
The vote followed an investigation by the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), which concluded that there are... Read More »
A group of House Democratic leaders sent letters to the CEOs of the major social media companies to request information on how they are responding to disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The letters were sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO... Read More »
Together with $34.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Mountain Sinai Health System, Emergent BioSolutions and ImmunoTek Bio Centers will collaborate on the development of a hyperimmune globulin treatment for COVID-19.
That treatment, known as COVID-HIG, was created by... Read More »
A bill that would require a plan for diagnostic testing and public health system integration for COVID-19 and future pandemics was introduced in the U.S. Senate this week.
The bill, the Timely and Effective Systematic Testing (TEST) Act, was introduced by Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Michael... Read More »
The Trump administration filed a notice to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, senior officials with the administration confirmed to various news outlets.
The move has been received negatively by key Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as leading health... Read More »
A bill designed to strengthen the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism efforts against transnational white supremacy and identity groups was introduced in Congress.
The Countering Global White Supremacist Terrorism Act directs the U.S. Department of State to assess the global threat of the... Read More »
House members of the Northern Border Caucus are pushing for a phased reopening of that United States-Canadian border, which has been shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In all, 29 Congress members, led by caucus co-chairs Brian Higgins (D-NY) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), called for... Read More »
Expanding on an existing partnership, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and Sonica Health announced last week that they will work together to create a wearable patch capable of monitoring for COVID-19 infections.
The device is meant for high-risk clinical... Read More »
Alarmed by heavy U.S. reliance on foreign nations for both its supply of drugs and pharmaceutical products, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill this week to require a study of that overreliance.
Specifically, the bill would require the Federal Trade... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) struck an agreement to secure large supplies of the drug remdesivir from Gilead Sciences.
HHS has secured more than 500,000 treatment courses of remdesivir -- the first authorized therapeutic for COVID-19 -- for U.S. hospitals through... Read More »
A group of U.S. Senators recently called on Senate leadership to include federal funding for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and housing programs in the next coronavirus pandemic response package.
Specifically, the Senators, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), are... Read More »
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Ministry of Health declared this week that an Ebola outbreak which has ravaged the eastern portion of the country since 2018 has finally reached its end.
The news was hailed by global and U.S. health officials, still themselves battling the worldwide... Read More »
The Trump administration will end federal support for 13 community-based COVID-19 testing sites by the end of the month, as the White House looks to other means of financial support for ongoing efforts.
This will particularly impact Texas, which has seen an explosion of cases in recent days,... Read More »
A group of U.S. senators recently introduced legislation designed to modernize the production of medical supplies for frontline healthcare providers and ensure the utilization of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to respond to emergencies.
The Public Health Emergency (PHE) Production Act –... Read More »
The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), which is tasked with supplementing state and local supplies of antibiotics, vaccines and other critical drugs and medical products, woefully needs a revamp to help the nation better prepare and respond to public health emergencies like the current COVID-19... Read More »
Reckoning with the possibility of bad actors taking advantage of a crisis, House members introduced two bills this week to protect patients from price-gouging on taxpayer funded COVID-19 drugs, avoid monopolies, and strengthen oversight of federally invested research and development funds.
The... Read More »
A panel of public health experts called on Congress to focus on creating a mechanism that would help create vaccines for future pandemics, even as the world is working to cope with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
“This pandemic is a harbinger of things to come,” Julie Gerberding, former... Read More »
In an effort to reduce shortages and the reliance on foreign medical supply chains, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and Department of Defense (DoD) have teamed up with Corning, Inc. to produce more glass tubing and vials quicker.
In particular, the federal... Read More »
The lack of a cohesive national plan for dealing with COVID-19 was once more brought to the fore last week with the release of a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which laid out a series of recommendations surrounding antibody studies.
These antibody studies --... Read More »
