Hopes rise on coronavirus drug remdesivir

www.nature.com /articles/d41586-020-01295-8
Heidi Ledford
7-8 minutes
A patient at the intensive care unit receives treatment from two hospital workers in Hefei, China

Coronavirus causes severe respiratory illness in some people.Credit: Zhang Yazi/China News Service via Getty

An experimental drug — and one of the world’s best hopes against COVID-19 — could shorten the time to recovery from coronavirus infection, according to the largest and most rigorous clinical trial of the compound.

The experimental drug, called remdesivir, interferes with replication of some viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the current pandemic. On 29 April, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), announced that a clinical trial of more than a thousand people showed that people taking remdesivir recovered in 11 days on average, compared to 15 days for those on a placebo.

Will antibody tests for the coronavirus really change everything?

Smriti Mallapaty
10-13 minutes
COVID-19 coronavirus antibody test kits.
More at  www.nature.com /articles/d41586-020-01115-z
Antibody tests might be used to help stem the COVID-19 pandemic — but first must overcome several hurdles.Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called them a ‘game changer’. Antibody tests have captured the world’s attention for their potential to help life return to normal by revealing who has been exposed, and might now be immune, to the new coronavirus.

Dozens of biotech companies and research laboratories have rushed to produce the blood tests. And governments around the world have bought millions of kits, in the hope that they could guide decisions on when to relax social-distancing measures and get people back to work. Some have even suggested that the tests could be used as an ‘immunity passport’, giving the owner clearance to interact with others again.

The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape

Stephen Mayhew
10-13 minutes
 (Figures and Tables ommited, for full article go here)
The genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was published on 11 January 2020, triggering intense global R&D activity to develop a vaccine against the disease. The scale of the humanitarian and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is driving evaluation of next-generation vaccine technology platforms through novel paradigms to accelerate development, and the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate entered human clinical testing with unprecedented rapidity on 16 March 2020.