Coronavirus is still wreaking havoc.
While some states, and countries may soon open for business, the virus is still causing issues. To date, nearly 3.7 million people have now been infected. We’ve seen 2568,085 deaths. There are 1.2 million cases in the U.S. In Spain, they’re nearing 220,000. In Italy, they’re just above 213,000. The UK is now nearing 200,000.
But there appears to be some good news out there.
We may be nearing a vaccine. For example, just days ago, Gilead’s (GILD) said preliminary results of a COVID-19 vaccine trial “showed at least 50% of patients treated with a 5-day dosage of antiviral drug remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks,” as noted by CNBC.
Even the World Health Organization (WHO) said it will speak with the U.S. and Gilead on how the remdesivir drug can be made widely available to the world. “There’s signals of hope there for the potential use of the drug,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, as quoted by CNBC.
In addition, Gilead has said it expects to produce more than 140,000 rounds of its 10-day treatment by the end of this month. It also says it can make a million rounds by the end of the year, and perhaps several million by 2021.
Hopefully, we see some good progress with this, so life can get back to some sort of normalcy.
Another hopeful vaccine is being created by Pfizer and BioNTech.
The two just announced they’ve begun delivering doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines for initial human testing in the United States, says CNBC. “If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective in trials, it could potentially be ready for wide U.S. distribution by the end of the year, shaving several years off the typical vaccine development timeline.”
“We are optimistic that advancing multiple vaccine candidates into human trials will allow us to identify the safest, most effective vaccination options against COVID-19,” said BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin, as quoted by MarketWatch.
