The first round of a study from USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health finds about 4.1% of the county’s adult population has antibody to the coronavirus.
Adjusting for statistical margin of error implies roughly 2.8%-5.6% has antibody, or about 221K-442K adults in the county. That would be 28x-55x higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases in the county at the time of the study in early April.
If those numbers sound familiar, they’re very close to the results of the Stanford study in Santa Clara county (which were released on Friday).
USC Professor of Public Policy Neeraj Sood: “We [may] have to recalibrate disease prediction models and rethink public health strategies.”
See also: Almost one-third of Chelsea (Boston) residents tested had antibodies linked to COVID-19.
Investors are driving up COVID-19 developers amid a mad dash to launch studies to generate preliminary safety and immunogenicity data. The first to do so will, undoubtedly, see a healthy jump in share price.
Selected tickers: Novavax (NVAX +30.4%), Moderna (MRNA +15.9%), Vaxart (VXRT +27.9%), Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO +16.9%), iBio (IBIO +2.3%), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ +0.6%), Sanofi (SNY +1.9%), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK +0.3%), Pfizer (PFE -0.6%), Soligenix (SNGX +9.9%)
Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IONS) announces that exclusive licensee Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY) has completed the enrollment of 791 subjects in a Phase 3 clinical trial, GENERATION HD1, evaluating antisense candidate tominersen (formerly IONIS-HTTrx or RG6042) in Huntington’s disease patients.
The primary endpoints are the changes from baseline at week 101 in two scales, cUHDRS and TFC Score. The estimated primary completion date is March 2022.
Tominersen is designed to reduce the production of all forms of huntingtin protein (HTT), including mHTT, the mutated variant.
Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) and Exelixis (NASDAQ:EXEL) announce positive results from a Phase 3 clinical trial, CheckMate-9ER, evaluating the combination of Opdivo (nivolumab) and Cabometyx (cabozantinib) for the first-line treatment of advanced/metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
The study met the primary endpoint of progression-free survival and secondary endpoints of overall survival and objective response rate.
No new safety signals were observed.
Detailed results will be presented at an upcoming medical conference.
EXEL is up 6% premarket on light volume, while BMY is down a fraction.
“We recognize the importance of answering the scientific question of whether hydroxychloroquine will be beneficial for patients with COVID-19 disease,” said John Tsai, Novartis’ (NYSE:NVS) top drug developer.
As a result, the company will conduct a randomized Phase III, or late-stage, trial on 440 hospitalized patients after getting the green light from the FDA.
Emergency use authorization was granted earlier this month, though so far there is no scientific proof the drug works against coronavirus.
