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Regeneron (REGN) and Roche (RHHBY) on Wednesday announced a partnership to speed up production of the therapy and fund clinical trials, as the coronavirus pandemic led to increased collaboration between erstwhile rivals.
In a statement Wednesday, Regeneron – which has tested a cocktail of antibodies – said in a statement Wednesday that the collaboration “provides significant scale and global expertise to bring REGN-COV2 to many other patients in the United States and throughout the world. the world, ”According to CEO Leonard Schleifer.
The two companies have been rivals in the field of vision loss and rheumatoid arthritis, but unprecedented demand in the global pharmaceutical market exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis has created strange bedfellows. Pharmaceutical collaborations for certain diseases have been a typical strategy, but the market for these is only a fraction of the world’s population of nearly 8 billion.
Roche has been one of the leaders in COVID-19 diagnostics with its high-volume testing machines. Roche previously tested a drug, Actemra, to treat COVID-19 – but ended clinical trials when the drug failed to meet its primary goal in July.
The increasingly urgent search for effective coronavirus treatments and a vaccine comes as the pandemic continues to strengthen its grip on the global economy. The number of cases worldwide has exceeded 22 million, with more than 781,000 deaths. The United States – the global epicenter of the epidemic – has nearly 5.5 million cases and 171,000 deaths.
However, in the United States, the outbreak of the virus has abated in the hard-hit Sun Belt states, even as concerns widen about a second wave in the fall, as the path to reopen schools and universities is more and more difficult. Meanwhile, New York, a former COVID-19 hotspot, reported on Wednesday that its infection rate had fallen to the lowest level since the start of the crisis – a major step in the city’s return to normalcy.
Cases in the south are starting to fade. (Graphic: David Foster / Yahoo Finance)
WHO weighs in on COVID response
Underfunding of public health has played a significant role in the poor response of many countries, as well as in the mixed participation of the community in needs such as quarantine and social distancing, according to the World Organization of health.
In a live session on Wednesday, the executive director of the WHO program for health emergencies, Michael Ryan, said contact tracing is a central pillar of controlling the virus and will be an important tool over the next six months, as schools reopen and society seeks to get back to normal.
Contact tracing, to isolate cases and ask people to quarantine them, can break the chain of transmission.
“If we do this tomorrow, we’ll bring down infection rates,” Ryan said, adding that weaknesses in public health systems around the world have been the biggest obstacle.
These systems “are not good enough, are not sufficiently invested” and are being ignored by governments, fueling the growth of the pandemic globally, he said.
That, coupled with a less than perfect turnout from local communities, is a “dangerous mix that allows the virus to bounce back”.
Anjalee Khemlani is a journalist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @AnjKhem
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