Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
NIH Is Looking For A Drugmaker To Develop Its Potential COVID-19 Vaccine But No One Is Raising Their Hand
Stat: Major Drug Makers Haven't Stepped Up To Make NIH Coronavirus Vaccine
No major pharmaceutical company has come forward to say it would manufacture a vaccine for the novel coronavirus currently being developed by the National Institutes of Health, a top U.S. official acknowledged Tuesday, a reality that he called “very difficult and very frustrating.” The comments by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, highlight how challenging it could be to translate the NIH’s work, being undertaken in partnership with the biotech company Moderna Therapeutics, into a vaccine that could be marketed. (Florko, 2/11)
The Washington Post: Global Experts Study Promising Drugs, Vaccines For New Virus
The World Health Organization convened outside experts Tuesday to try to speed the development of tests, treatments and vaccines against the new coronavirus, as doctors on the front lines experiment on patients with various drugs in hopes of saving lives in the meantime. The 400 scientists participating in the two-day meeting — many remotely — will try to determine which approaches seem promising enough to advance to the next step: studies in people to prove if they really work. (Keaten and Cheng, 2/11)
Philadelphia Inquirer: Inside A Philadelphia Lab, Scientists Race To Design A Coronavirus Vaccine
Faraz Zaidi and Daniel Park peered at a series of small, black blots that appeared on a clear sheet of plastic — confirming they had created a type of protein that, until January, was unknown to science. It was a signal alerting them to the presence of the microscopic “spikes” on a coronavirus — the infectious microbe that, at last count, had killed more than 1,000 people in China. (Avril, 2/11)
WBUR: There's No Specific Drug That Kills Coronavirus. But Doctors Have Ways To Treat It
Even though the coronavirus disease that has sickened tens of thousands of people in China is new to science, doctors have a pretty good idea about how to treat it. COVID-19, as it is now named, attacks the lungs. Doctors see similar symptoms from other diseases all the time, especially from serious cases of the flu.There's no specific drug that can kill this virus. So doctors provide what's known as supportive care, says Dr. Laura Evans, a critical care specialist at the University of Washington and a member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine's Leadership Council. (Harris, 2/11)
And in other news —
Stat: Understanding Pandemics: Key Questions As The Coronavirus Spreads
The word “pandemic” is not a comforting one. And yet it is increasingly being bandied about in connection with the spread of the novel coronavirus that emerged from China. U.S. health officials have been signaling for nearly two weeks now that a coronavirus pandemic may be on the horizon. While stressing that the virus presents only a “low risk” to Americans right now, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged Tuesday that that might not remain the case for long. (Banswell, 2/12)
Bloomberg: Early Coronavirus Genetic Data May Have Forewarned Outbreak
China didn’t release key genetic data on the coronavirus until about two weeks after it emerged that a new SARS-like illness may be sickening people, highlighting the need for outbreak detection systems to incorporate modern scientific tools. Insufficient attention was paid to the information doctors had gathered about the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus, scientists said in a commentary paper in the Lancet medical journal Tuesday. The authors, who include two members of the World Health Organization’s emergency committee, said this wasn’t the result of a cover-up or deliberate delay, but rather the absence of mechanisms to inform outbreak warning systems. (Gale, 2/11)
