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On March 10, 2020, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), announced the expansion of its COVID-19 vaccine portfolio. CEPI will be investing a further $4.4 million in partnering agreements with Novavax, Inc. and The University of Oxford to rapidly develop vaccine candidates against COVID-19.
CEPI will provide initial funding to Novavax to enable preparations for phase 1 trials. Funding for The University of Oxford project will support the manufacture of vaccine materials required for preclinical and phase 1 testing.
The investments announced today are a result of a recent global call for proposals that CEPI issued in early February 2020.
DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) isn’t looking to create a vaccine, which can take years to produce. Rather, the goal is to identify the specific monoclonal antibodies that the body naturally produces when it encounters a virus and then trick the body into producing the one that guards against a specific illness. That could serve as a temporary, months-long shield, that can protect an individual from the pathogen.
The P3's principal benefit of the nucleic-acid-based approach to limiting the spread of infection is that genetic constructs introduced into the body would process quickly and not integrate into an individual’s genome. Similarly, the antibodies produced in response to treatment would only be present in the body for weeks to months.
The status of U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it is postponing most foreign inspections through April 2020, effective immediately. Inspections outside the U.S. deemed mission-critical will still be considered on a case-by-case basis.
When we are temporarily not able to physically inspect foreign-produced FDA-regulated products or manufacturers, as an interim measure we employ additional tools to ensure the safety of products imported to the U.S., which have proved effective in the past, said the FDA on March 10, 2020.
On March 10, 2020, Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow announced in an email all Harvard courses will move to remote instruction beginning March 23rd, as a result of a growing global coronavirus outbreak.
And, the University will also ask students not to return from spring break.
The Ivy League announced on March 10, 2020, it would cancel its men's and women's basketball conference tournaments because of the risk of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The Ivy League instead will award its automatic NCAA tournament bids to the regular-season champions, the Princeton women and Yale men.
The Ivy tournaments are the first at the Division I basketball level to be canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak, reported ESPN.
As of 4 pm on March 10th, the CDC confirmed:
- Total cases: 647
- Total deaths: 25
- Jurisdictions reporting cases: 36 (includes District of Columbia)
Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020.
As part of the government-wide efforts to respond to the global outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it intends to purchase 500 million N95 respirators over the next 18 months for the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). Through guaranteed orders, this acquisition encourages manufacturers to immediately increase the production of N95s for use by healthcare professionals.
The SNS is the nation’s largest supply of potentially life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.
According to reporting by the Guardian on March 10, 2020, the 1st clinical trial of the antiviral medicine Remdesivir in treating Covid-19 disease patients is due to report its findings soon. While awaiting these results, the USA, China, and Italy are already using Remdesivir on a compassionate basis to treat small numbers of patients with severe Covid-19.
The first patient in the USA was a 35-year-old man in Snohomish County, Washington, who recovered from this novel disease.
Gilead Sciences indicated it had already accelerated the manufacturing of the drug to increase its supplies “as rapidly as possible”.
