PROGRESS
February 4, 2021
- In a surprise announcement at the Feb. 1 White House coronavirus briefing Monday, Andy Slavitt, President Biden’s senior advisor for COVID-19 response, announced that an over-the-counter at-home COVID testing kit will soon be available, supplied by the digital diagnostics company Ellume. The kits are roughly 95% accurate and take about 15 minutes to yield results; you swab your nose, apply the swab to a sensor and receive an answer on your smartphone, and the test works for people with and without symptoms, Slavitt said.
- Ellume was planning to ship 100,000 test kits per month beginning in February, but the Biden Administration has used the Defense Production Act to increase production to over 19 million test kits per month by the end of 2021, of which 8.5 million will be guaranteed to the United States, Slavitt said.
- Aplidin, a drug that is currently used to fight multiple myeloma (a cancer of plasma cells), has been found in a non-human study to be 27.5 times more effective in treating COVID-19 than Remdesivir, the only fully approved drug for treating the COVID-19 illness. (Source: The Week)
- Aplidin is derived from a small marine plant-like creature called a sea squirt. While it has not yet been tested in humans, it was found effective in laboratory studies using human kidney and lung cells infected with COVID-19. It was also successful in studies using lab mice infected with the virus.
- According to The Week, this treatment — which was discovered by an international committee of university scientists who had been looking for treatments among existing drugs instead of inventing new ones — has completed the first two phases of trial testing, beginning its third trial in the near future.
- Two additional vaccines reported results from their Phase 3 trials this week and are now seeking FDA emergency approval — the Novavax vaccine and Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccine. (Source: press briefing by the White House on Jan. 29)
- The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is anticipated to become the third vaccine approved for mass use in the US, with 66% effectiveness in COVID prevention overall and 85% effectiveness in preventing severe cases of the virus. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is not an mRNA vaccine but rather an Adenovirus-based vaccine and requires only one dose.
- Novavax completed three trial phases in the UK which revealed that the vaccine is 89.3% effective in COVID prevention. Novavax is not an mRNA vaccine but rather a soluble protein vaccine.
- While the effectiveness percentages of these two vaccines were found to be lower than Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, officials said that it was because the newer vaccines were being tested in places where the new variants were spreading. Those variants did not yet exist when Pfizer and Moderna were first being tested.
- As variants continue to evolve, they may pose a larger threat to the effectiveness of existing vaccines. Vaccine developers plan to develop mRNA booster shots, in addition to the two-dose vaccines, that will contain immunogens aimed towards combating specific COVID-19 mutations.