June 17 coronavirus news

The first patient in a phase 3 trial was dosed with a drug from Eli Lilly that the pharmaceutical company hopes can help hospitalized patients with Covid-19.  

The drug — named baricitinib and marketed as Olumiant — is a therapy approved to treat adults that have moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis. 

The phase 3 study will enroll 400 patients with Covid-19 who have at least one marker for inflammation but have not been put on a ventilator by the start of the study. The study looks at whether the drug could reduce cytokine storm, the body’s hyper-inflammatory response to the virus and a severe complication that can come with Covid-19 infection. 

About the trial: The trial will be conducted in the United States, Latin America and Europe. Lilly said the company should know how well the therapy works in a couple of months. 

This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Patients will get standard care or they will be treated with baricitinib for 14 days or until they are discharged from the hospital. The study will measure if someone improves, if they are put on a ventilator by day 28, or if they die. 

The drug is also being used in a few other trials with Covid-19 patients. In one trial by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, scientists are trialing the drug in combination with Gilead’s antiviral remdesivir. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said baseball season should not extend past October to avoid the risk of spreading Covid-19.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, Fauci said Major League Baseball (MLB) should conclude the postseason in September over concerns of a second coronavirus wave in the fall.

MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the player's union, are still negotiating a shortened baseball season. Both sides remain at odds over health protocols and the length of the season. 

Fauci explained that even with the current warm weather, there's been an increase in the number of new coronavirus cases as states continue to reopen, but said "the chances of there being less of an issue in the end of July and all of August and September are much, much better than if you go into October.”

“This virus is one that keeps fooling us. Under most circumstances — but we don’t know for sure here — viruses do better when the weather starts to get colder and people start spending more time inside, as opposed to outside," Fauci told the LA Times. "The community has a greater chance of getting infected."

Fauci said he misses watching his hometown team, the World Series champion Washington Nationals. But he told the LA Times he would go to a game in the stadium if there is limited capacity, spaced out seating and everyone is required to wear a mask — and if the infection rate in Washington, DC declines further. 

The European Union on Wednesday put forward a strategy that would see the European Commission centrally purchase a Covid-19 vaccine on behalf of all EU countries.

In addition, to ensure the quick development and delivery of the vaccine, the plan would also see the commission pay upfront for some of the costs faced by vaccine producers, in exchange for the right to buy a set number of doses at a fixed price.

The commission launching the strategy said centralizing "vaccine procurement at EU level has the merit of speed and efficiency by comparison with 27 separate processes." They added, “No Member State on its own has the capacity to secure the investment in developing and producing a sufficient number of vaccines.”

The commission believes that its EU-wide approach will create a number of advantages for both EU countries and producers. 

For vaccine producers, the commission says their process would cut red tape and offer a “significantly simplified negotiation process with a single point of contact.”

How the process would work: To enable rapid deployment of a vaccine across the EU, the commission would centrally negotiate with individual producers and invest in all stages of development from clinical trials to increasing capacity along the entire production chain to allow for large-scale production of the vaccine.

In return for investing upfront, the commission would have “the right to buy a specified number of vaccine doses in a given timeframe and at a given price,” according to their plan.

To finance this plan, the commission is proposing to use a new 2.7 billion euro fund called the Emergency Support Instrument which was created to help EU member states recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

For EU countries, the commission believes member states, “would be able to benefit from purchasing vaccines through a single procurement action,” and would also benefit from the “scientific and regulatory expertise of the Commission.”

 The commission is also asking countries to “participate in the process from the start” and “contribute their expertise on potential vaccine candidates”.

Last week France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands formed the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance to pool the national resources of those countries to secure 400 million doses of a vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

 A “doctors’ group” has banded together as an offshoot of the White House coronavirus task force, a source close to the task force told CNN.

Members of the group include Dr. Deborah Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Stephen Hahn and Dr. Robert Redfield.

The source said the doctors’ group meets two to three times a week by phone and then briefs Vice President Mike Pence.

One of these briefings is scheduled for today, when the group plans to raise the issue of increased infection rates in many states.

Remember: President Trump declared last month that his coronavirus task force would continue "indefinitely" after he and Pence said they were phasing out the health-focused panel in favor of a group focused on reopening the economy.

The reversal came after outcry and concern from outside health experts, who said it was too early to disband the health-focused panel. 

Currently, there are 21 states with infection rates trending upward in newly reported cases from one week to the next.

More than 2 million people in the US have been infected with coronavirus and more than 116,900 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Health experts are warning that more infections and deaths are in store as states continue their reopening plans.

Here's how states are trending in new cases from one week to the next:

New Zealand’s Prime Minister said on today that the two new coronavirus cases reported on yesterday was due to an “unacceptable failure of the system.”

The cases marked the first instances of coronavirus in New Zealand to be reported in 24 days, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

The two cases are both women from the same family who arrived in New Zealand from the UK via Australia and were permitted on compassionate grounds to leave an isolation hotel in Auckland and travel to Wellington via private vehicle to visit a relative who has since died, Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said in news conference yesterday.

Ardern also announced on today that she would appoint the military to oversee New Zealand’s quarantine process saying, "I am appointing the assistant Chief of Defense Air Commodore Darryn Webb to oversee all quarantine and managed isolation facilities, including the processes around the exit of those who have been in these facilities.”

Around 356,000 people linked to the Xinfadi market coronavirus cluster have been tested according to Beijing officials.

Those tested include residents in the surrounding communities, those who have been tracked by big data and personnel in various markets across the city according to Zhang Qiang, an official with the Beijing government. 

Beijing’s testing capacity currently stands at around 400,000 tests a day but will continue to increase, the Beijing official said. 

Zhang added that some residents were tested after reporting themselves to authorities during “community door-knocking initiatives.”

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says he will take an "immediate" 10% pay cut to his $191,574 (£152,734) salary because London's public finances "are facing unprecedented challenges" due to the "devastating impact" of Covid-19.

"In these extremely difficult times, I promise to do all I can to protect our city’s frontline services. This includes taking an immediate pay cut," Khan tweeted Wednesday.

The Greater London Authority (GLA) -- the devolved regional governing body of London, which Khan is in charge of -- faces a forecast £493 million ($618 million) budget shortfall over the next two years “as a result of an unprecedented loss of business rates and council tax income, caused by Covid-19, that is hitting every local authority in the country,” according to a press release.

He urged the UK government to support local and regional authorities across the UK, warning that London's Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade, Transport for London and the GLA will otherwise face "significant cuts" at the "worst possible time."

“Londoners did the right thing to tackle Covid-19 by following the rules, staying at home and helping to save lives. But now the government is punishing them with a new era of austerity," Khan said in a statement.

“Unless ministers act, the current number of police officers will need to be reduced and it will be impossible to tackle youth violence or make the changes to the London Fire Brigade that are desperately needed after the awful Grenfell Tower tragedy.”

The salaries of Khan's 15 direct political appointments will also be frozen as part of the cost-saving measures.

A German pharmaceutical company has been authorized to launch human trials for a vaccine against coronavirus by the federal institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines.

CureVac, a company based in Tuebingen, will start testing on 168 healthy volunteers and is the 11th authorized clinical trial for a preventive vaccine globally.

The announcement comes on the same day that a district of the German capital has placed more than 300 households into quarantine after 57 new outbreaks were registered.