On June 11, 2020, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals initiated the first of its randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials of REGN-COV2, its experimental dual antibody cocktail for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Th e trials were conducted at multiple sites and consisted of four study populations—hospitalized COVID-19 patients, non- hospitalized symptomatic COVID-19 patients, …

Early on October 2, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump, 74, revealed that he had tested positive for the novel corona virus. A day earlier, he had tested positive on a rapid test used for screening White House staff , which was later confirmed by a more accurate lab test. He …

Neuralink Corporation is a neuro technology company founded by Elon Musk and others in 2016 with its headquarters in San Francisco. Its team of extraordinarily talented scientists is working to develop a fully integrated brain machine interface (BMI) system—sometimes called a brain computer interface (BCI)—that enables a computer (or other …

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 claimed 4,810 lives in Liberia, 3,956 in Sierra Leone, and 2,544 in Guinea. The COVID-19 pandemic has already claimed 766,080 lives in about 213 countries from December 31, 2019, to August 16, 2020. Even in a relatively modest outbreak, compared to the …

In the United States, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is a collaboration of several US government departments, including Health and Human Services, and the private sector. Through it, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has entered into collaboration with 18 bio pharmaceutical companies to accelerate development of drugs and vaccines to …

Director General Balram Bhargava of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has announced that Phase 2 clinical trials of two indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccines have been almost completed. India has two indigenous vaccine candidates—ZyCOV-D by Zydus Cadila and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech. He said that while final trials normally …

The United Kingdom’s Royal College of Pathologists has called for more stringent rules on kits sold directly to consumers, warning that they can “mislead the public and put individuals at risk”. They say that the tests should be used with professional back-up and should give the right results that are …

Backtracking on his earlier suggestion to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for all, the Australian prime minister has clarified, “There are no compulsory vaccines in Australia,” and that there will be “no compulsory vaccine, but there will be a lot of encouragement and measures to get as high a rate of …

According to Japanese health minister Katsunobu Kato, British company AstraZeneca Plc will supply 120 million doses of its vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford. The first tranche of 30 million doses will be received in March, 2021. AstraZeneca is conducting the final-stage clinical trial of its experimental AZD1222 …