Two vaccines for the novel coronavirus are potentially just days away from being approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a massive step toward widespread distribution in a population with millions of sick patients. But the vaccines aren’t just potential lifelines for a country stuck in the throes of a horrific pandemic. Instead, experts say, they could be pioneers for a new, […]
David Axe
27 posts
As coronavirus infections skyrocket and hospitals across the United States fill up with serious COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week approved the first-ever rapid home COVID-19 test for emergency use. The All-In-One Test Kit from California biotech firm Lucira Health uses some of the most reliable molecular-RNA technology, takes just 30 minutes, and is more than 90 percent accurate, according to the […]
When Pfizer announced its late-stage novel coronavirus vaccine candidate was 90 percent effective on Monday, stock markets soared, critics started taking shots on Twitter, and right-wing conspiracy theories about the timing of the announcement—less than 48 hours after Joe Biden claimed the presidency—quickly proliferated. The public-health implications are massive. Pfizer expects to request emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the end of […]
When it comes to treating serious cases of COVID-19, the antiviral drug Remdesivir helps. So do steroids, which can serve to reduce inflammation. And supplemental oxygen, as most Americans familiar with the basics of the coronavirus pandemic might guess, can ease shortness of breath. The jury’s still out on convalescent plasma, however, despite plenty of hype and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) controversy. And you […]
Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly on Tuesday halted one of two trials of a major new novel coronavirus therapy after independent safety monitors observed an unspecified problem with the testing. The Data Safety Monitoring Board froze trials of the Indiana company’s monoclonal antibody drug bamlanivimab, which was being administered in combination with the antiviral drug remdesivir. The board didn’t freeze separate trials testing bamlanivimab on its own, […]
The experimental novel coronavirus drug Donald Trump took last week is not, as the president claims, a cure for COVID-19. The monoclonal antibody cocktail, under development by New York pharma Regeneron, seems promising, experts and health officials say. But it and a similar antibody cocktail from Indiana firm Eli Lilly—also touted by the president—are still in trials. It’s too soon to say exactly what they do […]
One month after regulators in the United States and United Kingdom froze trials of a British novel coronavirus vaccine candidate, U.S. testing is still on hold. That has big implications for the urgent, multi-billion-dollar effort to produce a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine. The testing pause could slow development efforts by Astrazeneca, the U.K. pharmaceutical company, and, in turn, leave two rival pharmaceutical giants alone as leading […]
The experimental drug President Trump received at the White House hours after being diagnosed with COVID-19 was provided under a “compassionate use” program usually reserved for patients who exhaust other treatment options, the manufacturer said Friday. News of the president consuming the so-called “polyclonal antibody cocktail,” made by New York-based pharma Regeneron, broke around the same time the administration announced Trump was being taken to Walter […]
If the Trump administration tries to push out a novel coronavirus vaccine before it’s fully tested, there are three committees of independent experts who could stand in its way. It’s a testament to the massive stakes of this kind of work that some of their names are effectively kept secret. These committees—two in government and one in the private sector—keep tabs on vaccine-testing, sign off on […]
The possibility that the American population might be able to achieve some kind of herd immunity to the novel coronavirus without a vaccine seems to be slipping away. Or at least that’s the worrying implication of a new study that appeared Friday in The Lancet, a medical journal. Experts said the research clarifies the desperate need for a vaccine, and the risk of letting up on […]
President Donald Trump’s advisers warned him as early as late January that the coronavirus pandemic, then taking root in China, could cost countless lives in America. Despite this stark warning, revealed by Bob Woodward in his new book Rage and first reported by CNN, Trump downplayed the pandemic—the exact opposite of what any responsible leader should do, experts told The Daily Beast. As a result, tens […]
Government regulators in the United Kingdom have ordered Cambridge-based pharma AstraZeneca to pause development of its novel-coronavirus vaccine candidate after a patient in the U.K. apparently had an unspecified adverse reaction to the vaccine. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the stand-down order came from the U.K. Data Safety Monitoring Board, which oversees pharmaceutical trials. The U.K. board coordinated with American regulators […]
Experts generally agree it will be a heavy lift for the pharmaceutical industry to develop and fully test a safe novel coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year—to say nothing of developing and testing one before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. But even if, by some miracle of science, a safe and effective vaccine were ready in the next couple of months, many […]
With the planet still deep in the throes of a horrific pandemic, the development is not exactly a welcome one: There is growing evidence that you can catch the novel coronavirus more than once. In recent weeks, a small number of people in the United States, Europe, and China appear to have caught COVID-19 again after recovering from the disease a previous time. The prospect of […]
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Tremel was in the cockpit of his Super Hornet fighter soaring 20,000 feet over war-torn Syria on June 18, 2017, when he detected a warplane heading toward a U.S.-backed militia force on the ground. Tremel tried to shoo away the other pilot by firing off bright decoy flares. But the Syrian aviator ignored the warning and dropped bombs on the militia […]
For a movie that bills itself as a “grindhouse PizzaGate satire,” there’s precious little grindhouse or Pizzagate in Duncan, the new indie thriller from Austin writer-director John Valley. But it is a satire. A shockingly effective one. Duncan levels its weird, Texas-tinged gaze on profiteering, conspiracy-peddling mass media—your Alex Joneses of the world—and cracks them wide open. “The movie’s about a guy out of his depth […]
Over seven months after the novel coronavirus went global, the United States still isn’t testing enough people. Nor is the U.S. delivering results quickly enough to provide meaningful disease surveillance. But virologists Dave O’Connor and Chris Mason had a simple idea for loosening up the testing logjam: pack vans with $5,000 worth of testing equipment and drive them around key locations in badly-hit communities with low […]
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Louisville are working on a nasal spray they say can help to prevent COVID-19 infections. The spray could be beneficial to health-care workers and others who are at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. But after months of work, development of the spray is now on hold owing to a lack of money—a common problem among […]
New Jersey pharmaceutical firm Becton, Dickinson and Company has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a fast, easy-to-use test for novel coronavirus infections. At first glance, the Veritor test system from BD, as the company is widely known, might seem like exactly the thing public-health officials have been clamoring for since SARS-CoV-2 first reached the United States early this year. But a […]
After months of safety trials, large-scale clinical testing is finally getting underway for the leading novel coronavirus vaccine candidates. The Trump administration hopes to approve at least one vaccine for widespread use before the end of the year. However, many experts are skeptical that a vaccine will be ready that quickly. And even when a vaccine is ready, actually deploying it could be easier said than […]
The U.S. Army has declared war on the novel coronavirus—and civilian scientists are grateful for the reinforcement. The ground combat branch’s Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland has been working on a range of tests and therapies as well as possible vaccines, the command’s top officer told reporters last week. “Our researchers and scientists are using all of our assets to develop […]
COLUMBIA, South Carolina—Steve Benjamin, the black mayor of Columbia, was pissed. “Take your asses home,” he ordered. It was Saturday evening, May 30, in this city of 140,000. A day of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police had started peacefully. That afternoon, hundreds of people gathered at the state capitol building at the southern end of the city’s bustling Main Street. They […]
With a flash of light, billowing smoke, and a thunderous roar, American astronauts on Saturday afternoon blasted into space aboard an American spacecraft for the first time since NASA decommissioned the aging, unsafe Space Shuttle fleet in 2011. The first manned flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft not only restores the United States’ ability to launch people into orbit, it also signals a possible new era […]
Scientists are closely tracking mutations in the novel coronavirus, hoping that the virus evolves fast enough to give researchers hints about its future, but slow enough that the same researchers can make sense of, and keep up with, the changes. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Efforts to contain the virus and treat the people it infects both hinge in part on the pathogen’s mutation rate. So […]
The pharmaceutical firm Moderna has reported good results so far in trials of its novel-coronavirus vaccine, inspiring cautious optimism in scientists scrambling to contain the damage from the ongoing pandemic. But these same scientists warn against getting too excited about early results, however positive. The world could still be a long way from having a working vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, to say nothing of deploying that vaccine […]
You may have seen the headlines: Smoking protects people from the new coronavirus. But this is one case where you shouldn’t believe everything you read. The false narrative put out by a number of news outlets highlights an underlying problem. Scientific studies can be complicated, and it’s easy for non-experts, including reporters, to misread their findings. The data on smoking and COVID-19 is buried in a […]
With the coronavirus pandemic spreading and most of the United States under some kind of shelter-in-place order, a lot of us are feeling pretty alone right now. So it’s the perfect time for science-writer Wade Roush to remind us that, in the cosmic sense, we might have a lot of company. On other planets and their moons. On asteroids hurtling through space. On meteorites that occasionally […]