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White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that data from a coronavirus drug trial testing Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir showed “quite good news.” Speaking to reporters from the White House, Fauci said he was told data from the trial showed a “clear cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover.” “This will be the standard of care,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, added.

Two COVID-19 patients who have been treated with the Israeli drug Opaganib have been showing signs of improvement after being on the drug for days. The Jerusalem Post reported that the patients had moderate-to-severe symptoms of the virus and one of them was in the ICU; after being treated with Opaganib and hydroxychloroquine — the anti-malarial drug that President Donald Trump has touted — both patients saw “significant improvement.” The patient in the ICU was released after taking the medications. Mark L. Levitt, the director of RedHill Biopharma — the Raleigh, N.C.-based company that developed Opaganib — said in an...

Coronavirus death rates are nearly six times lower in countries that use a nearly century-old tuberculosis vaccine, a new study found. The study, conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that the COVID-19 mortality rate among countries that use the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination was 5.8 times lower than in those that do not.

As the world continues to contend with the pandemic of coronavirus, medical experts are quickly working to find a cure or treatment. Two potential treatments, in particular, have shown promise in recent tests, but at this stage, it is too early to be sure about them as safe treatments and studies appear to indicate some troubling side effects. Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug infamously touted by President Trump as a cure for the virus, has been found to have dangerous side effects. French researchers have found that the drug can have a negative impact on the heart, as it has observed...

Slated for human trials, EIDD-2801 could become the first pill for COVID-19An oral medicine was able to hinder the coronavirus behind COVID-19 as it attempted to replicate itself in human lung cells in test tubes, scientists reported Monday. It also hampered closely related coronaviruses from reproducing in mice for several days and improved their lung functions.* The drug, called EIDD-2801, interferes with a key mechanism that allows the SARS-CoV-2 virus to reproduce in high numbers and cause infections, the researchers explained in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Human trials have not yet been done, but if the effect is similar...

An international poll of more than 6,000 doctors released Thursday found that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus. The survey conducted by Sermo, a global health care polling company, of 6,227 physicians in 30 countries found that 37% of those treating COVID-19 patients rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy” from a list of 15 options. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave chloroquine and its next-generation derivative, hydroxychloroquine, emergency-use authorization Monday for treating the novel coronavirus, although the drug was already being used off-label by some doctors and hospitals for COVID-19...

As of April 1, 1524 total patients have been treated with Hydroxychloroquine with Azithromycin. Of this population, only 1 death has been recorded.

1291 patients, 1 death Number of patients added since yesterday to this treatment plan was 288.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of two anti-malaria drugs to treat patients infected by the new coronavirus. On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine could be prescribed to teens and adults with COVID-19 "as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible," after the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization. (EUA) That marked the first EUA for a drug related to COVID-19 in the U.S., according to the statement. Currently, there are no specific drugs for COVID-19 which, as shown...

Abstract We need an effective treatment to cure COVID-19 patients and to decrease the virus carriage duration. In 80 in-patients receiving a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin we noted a clinical improvement in all but one 86 year-old patient who died, and one 74 year old patient still in intensive care unit. A rapid fall of nasopharyngeal viral load tested by qPCR was noted, with 83% negative at Day7, and 93% at Day8. Virus cultures from patient respiratory samples were negative in 97.5% patients at Day5. This allowed patients to rapidly de discharge from highly contagious wards with a mean...

- The Abbott ID NOW™ COVID-19 test brings rapid testing to the front lines - Test to run on Abbott's point-of-care ID NOW platform - a portable instrument that can be deployed where testing is needed most - ID NOW has the largest molecular point-of-care installed base in the U.S. and is available in a wide range of healthcare settings - Abbott will be making ID NOW COVID-19 tests available next week and expects to ramp up manufacturing to deliver 50,000 tests per day - This is the company's second test to receive Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA for...

They don’t want this thing cured too early. – Thursday evening, a spokesman for Stanford University Medical Center appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to tout a long-used prescription drug called hydroxycholoroquine (HC) as a safe and effective cure for the coronavirus: Michael Coudrey ✔ @MichaelCoudrey NEW DATA: A French study has demonstrated evidence that the combination of Hydroxychloroquine & Azithromycin are highly effective in treating Covid-19. The patients enrolled in the study showed complete viral eradication around the 5th day of treatment. https://twitter.com/michaelcoudrey/status/1240143162510893058 … View image on Twitter Michael Coudrey ✔ @MichaelCoudrey BREAKING: There is an anti-malaria drug...

"In the current context of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic on French territory and worldwide. In accordance with the Hippocratic Oath that we have taken, we obey our duty as doctors. We provide our patients with the best care for the diagnosis and treatment of a disease. We respect the rules of the art and the most recently acquired data of medical science. We have decided : For all febrile (fever) patients who come to consult us, to carry out tests for the diagnosis of infection with Covid 19; For all infected patients, many of whom are...

<p>President Donald Trump is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to speed up approval of antiviral therapies that could combat the coronavirus, despite warnings that untested treatments could harm Americans infected with COVID-19.</p> <p>In the short-term, Trump has directed the FDA to “slash red tape like nobody’s ever done before” in order to make treatments already approved for other uses available for COVID-19 patients.</p>

Could a drug already in existence turn out to be the gamechanger countries around the world are searching for to defeat coronavirus? This is what researchers at US drug firm Gilead are currently investigating, spurred by reports of the apparent recovery of an Italian patient who had tested positive for the virus. On Tuesday evening, reports emerged that a 79-year-old man from Italy’s Liguria region represented “the first real case of coronavirus cured” and that the man would soon be discharged from hospital. The man was treated with a drug called remdesivir, a broad-spectrum antiviral that was originally developed by...

President Trump held up two drugs as possible treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, in a conference call with governors on Thursday. He said chloroquine, an older drug used to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, was "very powerful" and has shown "very, very encouraging early results," adding that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug for use against the coronavirus. The FDA said in a subsequent statement that "there are no FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure, or prevent COVID-19." Doctors can prescribe chloroquine "off-label," for unapproved uses, to treat COVID-19 patients....

Summary COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across the globe and the U.S.The first of six Remdesivir trials could finish as soon as April.Gilead's Remdesivir is very promising according to experts and scuttlebut.This article lists the primary 12 reasons I think Remdesivir remains frontrunner to combat COVID-19. One subscriber to The Special Situation Report asked about how much upside I think there is for Gilead (GILD) if Remdesivir is successful. In good news, Wells Fargo now thinks Remdesivir can add $20 to the stock over time.My approach so far has been that this is not the question I want to try...

As the Wuhan coronavirus is ravaging countries across the globe, there may be some promising news on the horizon. According to Gregory Rigano, an advisor to Stanford University School of Medicine, a world renowned French researcher tested a promising COVID-19 treatment option with a drug that’s been around for decades and is typically used to treat malaria.  “As of this morning…a well-controlled peer reviewed study carried out by the most eminent infectious disease specialist in the world—Didier Raoult, MD, PhD—out of the south of France, in which he enrolled 40 patients…that showed a 100 percent cure rate against coronavirus," Rigano...