Emerging Infectious Diseases
After days of pressure on the U.S. government to respond with aid for the surging COVID-19 crisis in India, an arrangement is underway that will see the deployment of vaccines in the coming weeks, as well as health advisors, raw materials, personal protective equipment (PPE), and funding.... Read More »
Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) recently reintroduced a measure they said is designed to bolster domestic personal protective equipment (PPE) production.
The Make PPE in America Act would enhance efforts to onshore production of personal protective equipment (PPE), hereby... Read More »
Following a recommended pause due to rare cases of severe blood clots among those administered the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are encouraging use to continue.
The announcement followed... Read More »
U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Rick Larsen (D-WA), chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation, joined 15 of their colleagues in introducing the Health Flights Act of 2021 on Thursday.
The legislation would create a set of... Read More »
Hundreds of non-hospitalized volunteers are being enrolled in a Phase 2/3 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-run trial of the SAB Biotherapeutics, Inc. creation SAB-185, a polyclonal antibody therapeutic meant to counter COVID-19.
The trial is known as ACTIV-2, part of the Accelerating COVID-19... Read More »
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) have successfully designed and conducted a study to optimize methods for collecting and measure small amounts of the Ebola virus in... Read More »
Valneva SE announced this week that it will no longer prioritize centralized discussions with the European Commission regarding the distribution of its inactivated, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001 but instead move to bilateral, country-by-country discussions.
“We’ve committed... Read More »
U. S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Carper (D-DE), co-chairs of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, introduced legislation Monday to ensure federal firefighters receive financial benefits if they contract a disease in the line of duty.
The Federal Firefighter Fairness Act of 2021 would... Read More »
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers are espousing the benefits of a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool capable of identifying COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media.
The AI models how the conspiracy theories evolved and how they could someday help public health officials... Read More »
Several over-the-counter drugs could potentially find new lives treating COVID-19 symptoms, as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced this week that $155 million would be invested into a phase three trial of up to seven self-administered medications to that end.
It will be a... Read More »
In response to the $1.7 billion investment tacked onto the American Rescue Plan to address COVID-19 variants, the Biden administration last week released a plan to rapidly invest those funds into genomic sequencing, innovation partnerships, and a new health data infrastructure.
From the total,... Read More »
Amid rising fears that variants of COVID-19 may already be reducing the efficacy of vaccines, INOVIO provided some good news last week, with news that its vaccine candidate produced neutralizing antibodies and T cell responses against all three major variant strains.
INO-4800, a DNA vaccine... Read More »
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office has found the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spent nearly $1 billion assessing whether other countries’ capacity to address infectious disease threats before the... Read More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released new guidance this week to clarify how it will request and conduct remote interactive evaluations during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, noting how critical such evaluations will be to operations.
This was meant for any FDA-regulated facilities,... Read More »
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will invest approximately $24 million into the first year of contracts for the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR) to aid a network of research sites investigating influenza.
These institutions cover... Read More »
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines recently spearheaded an effort in which Congress received a report assessing intelligence community threats.
The endeavor examined various threats against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, great power competition, and rapidly evolving... Read More »
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has utilized the BioFlash Biological Identifier created by Smiths Detection to successfully identify airborne traces of SARS-CoV-2 inside its campus in real-time.
BioFlash is a device that collects and analyses air samples, rapidly sifting... Read More »
A phase two trial sponsored and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has begun to investigate the safety and efficacy of IC14, a lab-created monoclonal antibody meant to treat the respiratory troubles of... Read More »
A panel of public health experts and U.S. senators agreed on several steps Congress should take to prevent or remediate the next pandemic, basing their proposals on lessons learned during the 14 months working to resolve the COVID-19 health crisis.
Among their recommendations, aired during a... Read More »
Specialty vaccine company Valneva SE has concluded recruitment of 4,131 adults for a phase three trial of VLA1553, a single-shot chikungunya vaccine candidate.
If approved, VLA1553 would be the first chikungunya vaccine to gain Biologics License Application. This would, in turn, earn its... Read More »
In a joint statement released today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended a pause in the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine over rare health concerns.
Much as has beleaguered the AstraZeneca... Read More »
A mix of casirivimab and imdevimab, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s REGEN-COV, is now strongly recommended by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for high risk COVID-19 patients that are non-hospitalized.
The drug was given a strong rate based on randomized trials, which involved more than... Read More »
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal government’s nerve center for its COVID-19 pandemic response, would receive an additional $1.6 billion in funding over last year’s approved levels under President Joe Biden’s mammoth $1.5 trillion federal spending plan for... Read More »
The international COVAX facility has managed to deliver more than 38 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to more than 100 economies within 42 days of its first international delivery to Ghana on Feb. 24, 2021.
It is a positive start for a massive global undertaking meant to... Read More »
New research from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has found that the deactivating effects of heat and sunlight are consistent across different variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus – the virus that causes COVID-19.
In a report published in the... Read More »
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has earmarked $3 billion to 64 jurisdictions to bolster broad-based COVID-19 vaccine distribution, access, and administration efforts.
The funding allotment would support local efforts to increase vaccine uptake by expanding COVID-19 vaccine... Read More »
Moderna, Inc. is trumpeting the interim results of a phase three trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, which have shown antibodies persisting for six months post-vaccination.
These results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, come with some caveats, though. While the results were founded... Read More »
An assessment by the COVID-19 subcommittee of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) has concluded that blood clots affiliated with the AstraZeneca vaccine are concerning but rare and require further study to determine a causal relationship.
All... Read More »
Bavarian Nordic received a new supply order from Janssen Pharmaceutica NV to manufacture and deliver bulk drug substance of MVA-BN Filo vaccine to treat Ebola.
The MVA-BN Filo vaccine will be licensed to Janssen as part of its Ebola vaccine regimen, Zabdeno and Mvabea, which the European... Read More »
The specialty vaccine company Valneva SE has issued positive data for Part A of the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of its inactivated, adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine candidate VLA2001.
Officials noted subject to regulatory approval, the company plans to initiate a Phase 3 clinical trial by the end of... Read More »
Moderna, Inc. is joining forces with Catalent, Inc. to create a high-speed vial filling line in Indiana that will aid the manufacture of its COVID-19 vaccine and, potentially, other items in Moderna’s clinical portfolio.
While Catalent -- a provider of advanced delivery technologies,... Read More »
The Symbiotica COVID-19 Self-Collected Antibody Test System gained emergency use authorization from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week, making it the first antibody test authorized for use with self-collected dried blood spot samples.
The test allows those prescribed... Read More »
A new COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) began a phase one clinical trial this week, following positive preclinical showings against SARS-CoV-2, its variants, and SARS-CoV-1, as well.
"Even before recent COVID-19 variants were identified, our team... Read More »
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. reported this week that it is on schedule to meet all manufacturing commitments related to COVID-19 vaccines, and that the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has increased its original task order by $23 million.
The funding injection from... Read More »
An ongoing Phase 2a trial of a Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies-developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate has been expanded to include adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17.
While there are still no approved COVID-19 vaccines for children, cases of COVID-19 in children have generally been less... Read More »
