Singapore has developed an event testing approach to make possible large events, weddings, and conferences. The pilot program will run from late October until December will utilize antigen rapid tests (ARTs) for the pre-event testing, which can return “fairly accurate” results within about half an hour, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH). The ART results will be valid for 24 hours from the time of the swab, and it must be valid at the point of entry until the end of the event, said MOH in a technical briefing on the matter. According to MOH officials: “If you go…
Author: Brett Johnson
The Washington Post has produced an exceptional work on vaccines and their progress. It does a wonderful job describing the complexity of vaccine development using infographics. Some of the key points. Researchers in the United States set an audacious goal in January to develop a coronavirus vaccine within 12 to 18 months. This would be a world record. The mumps vaccine is considered to be the fastest to move, in four years, from scientific concept to approval in 1967. The quest for an HIV vaccine continues, 36 years and counting. Coronavirus vaccines are moving much faster, partly because governments are taking on the…
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), announced a third round of contract awards for scale-up and manufacturing of new COVID-19 testing technologies. The six new Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative contracts total $98.35 million for point-of-care and other novel test approaches that provide new modes of sample collection, processing and return of results. Innovations in these new technologies include integration with smart devices, mobile-lab processing that can be deployed to COVID-19 hot spots, and test results available within minutes. These awards are part of the RADx Tech program, focused on rapidly advancing early testing…
ASU, World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation partner help companies get back to work through a new initiative :The COVID-19 Diagnostics Commons — an interactive hub for the global community to access the very latest information about testing options and to share knowledge and practices for safely bringing back and keeping employees in the workplace during the COVID-19 era. Real-world, timely and accessible data on workplace reopening, testing and employee safety initiatives is needed to get the global economy back on track. To that end, two critical resources are now available: The COVID-19 Workplace Commons, which collects and disseminates…
An insightful article on COVID-19 testing was authored by Mara G. Aspinall co-founder of the biomedical diagnostics program at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions. Published October 9th. According to Aspinall, “PCR tests cost too much and take too long, too few will be tested and the results will arrive too late to act on them. Counterintuitively, less sensitive antigen tests are more effective at identifying those who could otherwise become super-spreaders.” Even if a less accurate antigen test misses the early hours of infectivity, it will definitely catch all cases by later that first day and on all subsequent…
Interview with Steven Chang PhD. Can you tell us about your current work? I’m currently involved in a company called Mirimus which has the saliva direct test, that’s licensed from Yale University. We do pool testing on virus on saliva samples for COVID. In people, children, especially because they’re just requires the ability to spit into a container. What is your background in the field of infectious disease? The pandemic that I’m most familiar with is the HIV. And testing was really, really critical, knowing who had the disease, who, how you could diagnose it. And so it became pretty…
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced last week that its experimental two-antibody cocktail reduced viral levels and improved symptoms in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The treatment, REGN-COV2, is also being studied for use in hospitalized patients, and for prevention of infection in people who have been exposed to COVID-19. The FDA can authorize emergency use of a drug before completing its review for a formal approval. Analysts believe that the Regeneron cocktail could work in a hospital setting where the patient is already severely ill and has a high viral load. Trial results for the first 275 patients showed the biggest effect in…
FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, is currently tracking the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 (coronavirus). This tracker contains an aggregation of publicly-available information from validated sources. According to Milken there are: 316 Treatments in 7 categories are being developed now. 212 Vaccines in development in 9 categories. 34 of which are now in testing. The leading vaccine candidates as of mid September 2020 are listed here.