Trump: May take drug to treat Covid-19, questions states’ ventilator needs

President Donald Trump on Saturday doubled down on his support for a drug that is still being tested to treat the coronavirus, saying he might take the medicine himself and encouraging others with doctor approval to do the same.

At his daily press briefing, Trump also chided some states for requesting more ventilators from the federal government than he said they needed.
Trump said the next week would be particularly tough with a “lot of death” coming from the coronavirus. But he also reiterated his concern that the social distancing “cure” for the outbreak was worse than the problem.
Trump faced criticism for initially playing down the risks of the coronavirus and has vacillated between warning Americans about its severity and complaining about its economic costs.
Trump’s optimistic comments on Saturday about the benefits of anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, reflected his tendency to put a positive spin on an issue even as data was still being gathered.
“I may take it,” Trump said. “I’ll have to ask my doctors about that, but I may take it.” Trump has been tested twice for the coronavirus, according to the White House, and both times the results were negative.
The European Commission said this week that the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine treating COVID-19 had not been proven.
Trump said the federal government had 29 million doses of the drug and was adding to its national stockpile. He said he had asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday to lift a hold on a U.S. order of the drug as well.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency authorization for the drug to be distributed from the national stockpile for doctors to prescribe to hospitalized COVID-19 patients, even as tests continue to be conducted and data collected.
“We’re just hearing really positive stories and we’re continuing to collect the data,” Trump said.
The president said fears of shortages had prompted U.S. states to request more ventilators than they needed. He said the federal government had 10,000 in its stockpile. “Some states have more ventilators than they need, they don’t even like to admit it,” he said.
The president, a Republican who is running for re-election in November, also praised Republican governors who have not issued “stay at home” orders for their states.
“They’re doing very well and they’re doing a magnificent job of running their states,” he said.
Even as top doctors emphasized the importance and effectiveness of social distancing measures, Trump again seemed to chafe at their impact on the economy.

“We’re not going to destroy our country,” he said. “We cannot let this continue, so at a certain point some hard decisions are going to have to be made.”
The current federal guidelines, which include admonitions for people to wash their hands and avoid groups larger than 10, are in place through the end of April.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump/trump-says-he-may-take-drug-to-treat-coronavirus-questions-states-ventilator-needs-idUSKBN21N011

Welltower drops £2.5B bid for Barchester

Welltower (NYSE:WELL) has dropped its £2.5B bid to buy nursing home group Barchester Healthcare, the Sunday Times reports.

That pullout comes amid the ongoing pandemic, which is shifting business plans worldwide.

Barchester employs more than 17,000 to run more than 200 care homes and seven registered hospitals in the UK, with more than 12,000 beds.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3558443-welltower-drops-2_5b-bid-for-barchester-report

Big Tobacco joins hunt for COVID-19 vaccine

British American Tobacco (NYSE:BTI) is developing a potential vaccine grown in tobacco plants, while Medicago, a biotech firm partly owned by Philip Morris (NYSE:PM), is pursuing a similar effort, WSJ reports.

The success of BAT’s approach will depend on whether its product elicits the appropriate immune response to protect against future infection with the new coronavirus, said Beate Kampmann, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Centre.

“What’s promising is the scalability,” she added.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3558452-big-tobacco-joins-hunt-for-covidminus-19-vaccine

Honeywell pressures suppliers to cut prices 30%

Honeywell (NYSE:HON) is asking some of its suppliers for 30% price cuts, extended payment terms and other concessions, Barron’s reports, citing a letter that says the request mirrors demands it is getting from its customers due to the economic impact of the coronavirus.

“Customers have come to us for support to balance the impacts across their supply chain,” according to the letter, which was signed by Honeywell’s chief procurement officer. “In turn, we are asking our supply chain partners for similar support.”

Honeywell reportedly is seeking 30% across-the-board price cuts, 60 additional days to pay its suppliers, 2% rebates on future order volume growth, holding of Honeywell inventory by its suppliers and immediate resolution of outstanding claims against the company.

The concessions Honeywell and others are seeking from suppliers are another kind of financing that the S&P Global rating firm has called a “sleeping risk” on the books of U.S. businesses.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3558445-honeywell-pressures-suppliers-to-cut-prices-30-barrons

Gilead ramps up remdesivir production ahead of approvals

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) has been working with regulatory authorities to start additional expanded access programs for remdesivir, its investigational medicine for COVID-19, Chairman and CEO Daniel O’Day wrote on the company’s website.

Such programs allow hospitals or physicians to apply for emergency use of the treatment for multiple severely ill patients at a time.

Even though the medicine isn’t yet approved for use by any regulatory authorities, Gilead is taking the step of of expanding production to increase supply.

“As a result we have reduced the end-to-end manufacturing timeline from approximately one year, to around six months,” O’Day wrote.

Its existing supply, including finished product and investigational medicine in final stages of production, amounts to 1.5M individual doses, which could equate to more than 140,000 treatment courses for patients.

Gilead is providing all of its existing supply at no cost to treat patients with the most severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Sets a goal of producing more than 500,000 treatment courses by October and more than 1M treatment courses by the end of the year.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has recommended that in order to be prepared for COVID-19 becoming a seasonal occurrence, drug manufacturers should take the risk to ramp up production of therapeutics before phase 2 trials begin.

Previously: Gilead’s remdesivir OK’d in Europe for compassionate use in COVID-19 (April 3)

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3558442-gilead-ramps-up-remdesivir-production-ahead-of-approvals

Massachusetts governor launches effort to trace coronavirus cases in state

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) announced Friday the state government is establishing a COVID-19 community tracing collaborative with a nonprofit that will begin operating at the end of the month.
Baker said the effort will be a “targeted” approach as the state seeks to blunt the effects of the coronavirus, which has already infected more than 10,000 people in Massachusetts and killed nearly 200 in the state.
“There is tracing happening now, but this program that we’re talking about launching today is a much more robust, targeted approach that we hope can be highly effective at slowing the spread of this highly infectious disease,” Baker said at a news conference. “It’s going to be a big part of our ongoing effort to manage and fight our way through COVID-19.”

Baker said Massachusetts is the first state in the country to create such a tracking program, which will be staffed by roughly 1,000 people who will contact patients to check on their recent activities and confirm they have not spread the highly infectious illness.
“The call center will get contact information for as many people as possible that they have come in contact with and potentially exposed,” Baker said. “People will be contacted and informed so that they can stay healthy, isolate when appropriate and prevent further spread.”
Partners In Health, the Boston-based nonprofit that is teaming up with the state government, has done public health interventions during previous crises such as Ebola and will oversee hiring, training and supervision for the virtual call center.
Joia Mukherjee, the group’s chief medical officer, said the effort will help people “isolate themselves” if they appear at risk and will reach out to people who may have contracted the virus but appear asymptomatic.
“We believe that people want to know if they have been in contact with this disease,” she said.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/491144-massachusetts-governor-launches-effort-to-trace-coronavirus-cases-in

Pentagon may treat coronavirus patients aboard Navy hospital ship

Defense Secretary Mark Esper is looking at the possibility of treating coronavirus patients aboard the Navy hospital ship docked in New York City, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Friday.
The 1,000-bed USNS Comfort, which was meant to treat non-COVID-19 patients as a way to take pressure off local hospitals, has treated only a few dozen patients since it docked in the city harbor Monday.
Meanwhile, the USNS Mercy hospital ship docked in Los Angeles has treated even fewer patients.

Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said switching to also treat COVID-19 infected patients on both ships is “something we’re looking at,” though Pentagon leadership is “very well aware of the risks in doing that.”
“We’ve all seen what happens on some of these ships like the cruise ships … it’s not an environment built for handling infectious diseases en masse,” Hoffman told reporters at the Pentagon.
He later added that such a decision is “not imminent.”
The Pentagon earlier Friday announced that the Comfort had loosened its screening process for patients to get on board after criticism that the ship has been too slow in admitting patients.
Before the changes, ambulances were required to take patients to a hospital first where they were screened for coronavirus and then referred to the ship.
Hoffman said the Pentagon changed the operating process so that ambulances now go directly to the Comfort.
“We expect that will increase the number [of patients],” Hoffman said of the new procedure.
Hoffman also said there have been fewer patients than expected on both ships due to the vessels arriving at their respective cities ahead of need.
Should coronavirus patients be treated on the Comfort, Hoffman said it would be “very difficult” to keep the virus from the infected patients, and the “likelihood of infection of our doctors goes up.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/491125-pentagon-may-treat-coronavirus-patients-aboard-navy-hospital-ship