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Thursday, April 30, 2020

Viking Therapeutics EPS misses by $0.01

Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VKTX): Q1 GAAP EPS of -$0.13 misses by $0.01.
Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $269.2M.
Shares -1.04%.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3567208-viking-therapeutics-eps-misses-0_01

Emergent Biosolutions EPS beats by $0.10, misses on revenue

Emergent Biosolutions (NYSE:EBS): Q1 Non-GAAP EPS of $0.01; GAAP EPS of -$0.24 beats by $0.10.
Revenue of $192.5M (+1.0% Y/Y) misses by $5.71M.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3567222-emergent-biosolutions-eps-beats-0_10-misses-on-revenue

Gilead Sciences EPS beats by $0.12, beats on revenue

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD): Q1 Non-GAAP EPS of $1.68 beats by $0.12; GAAP EPS of $1.22 misses by $0.03.
Revenue of $5.55B (+5.1% Y/Y) beats by $110M.
Shares -0.7%.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3567166-gilead-sciences-eps-beats-0_12-beats-on-revenue

‘Dead’ coronavirus particles may cause recovered patients to test positive

South Korean health officials said recovered coronavirus patients who later tested positive again only did so because “dead” virus particles remained in their bodies — not because they became reinfected.
A total of 292 people in the country who were cleared of the deadly bug later tested positive for COVID-19 again — a phenomenon that initially puzzled officials, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, according to a report in Newsweek.
But they’ve now determined that residual fragments of the virus are likely responsible.
“RNA fragments still can exist in a cell even if the virus is inactivated,” said Oh Myoung-don, who heads the KCDC’s clinical committee for emerging disease control, Newsweek said.
“It is more likely that those who tested positive again picked up virus RNA that has already been inactivated.”
Still, there are some concerns about South Korea’s positive retests as the number of second-time diagnoses has steadily risen. Two weeks ago, repeat diagnoses accounted for about 2 percent of the country’s recovered patients. By Wednesday, the number had risen to 2.7 percent, and 3.4 percent among children.
Preliminary tests released by the KCDC on April 17 determined that those patients re-tested positive an average of 13.5 days after being cleared and discharged from isolation — although the time spanned as long as 35 days, the report said.

Scientists studied 137 of the initial cases and reported that 61 of the patients showed mild symptoms, 72 were asymptomatic and four others were still being studied.
However, health officials said there was no indication yet that those patients had spread the virus to others.
“Contact tracing on these re-positive cases is also underway to identify the possibility of secondary infection,” the center said in an April 26 report. “No new case has yet been confirmed that resulted from exposure to the re-positive cases. The contracts are still under monitoring.”
As of Thursday morning, South Korea had 10,765 reported cases of COVID-19, with 247 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global pandemic.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/30/dead-coronavirus-particles-may-cause-positive-test-results/

How to control an influenza outbreak without a specific vaccine

A group of pandemic modeling experts from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Engineering have published new research that simulated viral influenza outbreaks to examine the efficacy of pandemic interventions in the absence of a tailored vaccine.
The general use of low-efficacy vaccines, coupled with a targeted application of antiviral medications, may be effective at countering the spread of influenza pandemics, new research from the University of Sydney has found.
Published by the Journal of The Royal Society Interface, the modeling sought to examine the effectiveness of pandemic interventions in the absence of a strain-specific .
“Pandemics typically occur with the emergence of new viral strains for which no tailored vaccine exists,” said Dr. Cameron Zachreson from the University’s Centre for Complex Systems, who in 2018 published research that found urbanization and air travel were leading to a growing risk of pandemic in Australian cities.
“Without a readily available vaccine, governments must mitigate outbreaks in other ways, making do with mechanisms at hand, such as antiviral medications, social distancing and low-efficacy vaccines developed for different viral strains. These are known as pre-pandemic vaccines.”
Dr. Zachreson’s team found pre-pandemic vaccines are most effective at containing a pandemic when combined with fast, contact-targeted, antiviral medication, which helps reduce transmission.
“These targeted interventions need to be implemented quickly compared to the transmission rate of the disease,” said Dr. Zachreson.
“The more effective a targeted strategy is at mitigating the epidemic, the longer it will have to be in place,” he added. “Mitigation will slow down disease spread but is unlikely to eradicate the pathogen completely.”
Even if a pre-pandemic vaccine is unable to bring about herd immunity, it can slow the spread of the virus and open a longer time window in which other measures can be effectively implemented, the researchers found.
Lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic
“Our study focuses on , for which many vaccines have previously been developed. There are no coronavirus vaccines available so pre-pandemic vaccination is not currently possible for COVID-19,” said Dr. Zachreson.
“If, hypothetically, a low-efficacy coronavirus vaccine was developed, our study would support its distribution in combination with other measures, as this would likely make them more effective.
“Another takeaway is that timing is everything in preventing a with targeted interventions. Cases must be identified, contacts traced, and measures implemented before the disease has time to spread within the community.”
Targeting neighborhoods less effective than contact targeting
The study showed that giving antiviral medication to people living in the same neighborhoods as index cases (the first documented patients within a population) was inefficient and did not significantly impact the disease’s rate of spread.
“On the other hand, giving antiviral medication to the social contacts of index cases did slow down disease spread if the response was fast compared to disease transmission speed,” Dr. Zachreson said.
“While there are no known antivirals that are effective for COVID-19, our study does reinforce the importance of contact tracing for the targeting of mitigation measures, as opposed to targeting by residential location.”
How the modeling worked
The AceMod simulator, a peer-reviewed method created by the Centre for Complex Systems, comprises over twenty-four million software agents, each with attributes of an anonymous individual, such as age, occupation, susceptibility and immunity to diseases. Contact rates within different social contexts, such as households, household clusters, local neighborhoods, schools, classrooms and workplaces are also built into the program.
The set of generated agents captures average characteristics of the real population and is calibrated to 2016 Australian Census data with respect to key demographic statistics.

Explore further
Greater social distancing could curb COVID-19 in 13 weeks: study

More information: Cameron Zachreson et al. Interfering with influenza: nonlinear coupling of reactive and static mitigation strategies, Journal of The Royal Society Interface (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2019.0728

Thermogenesis rockets 74% on performance of COVID-19 blood test

Nano cap ThermoGenesis (THMO +73.6%) jumps more than a 13x surge in volume in apparent response to performance characteristics of its SARS-CoV-2 IgM/IgG Antibody Fast Detection Kit that it published on its website.
Although the sample sizes were modest, the data showed 100% sensitivity (n=10) and 95.8% [should be 96% (n=48/50)] specificity.
The latter is the most important characteristic for epidemiologists since too many false positive results will compromise their efforts in contact tracing and research into the spread and persistence of the pandemic.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3567135-thermogenesis-rockets-74-on-performance-of-covidminus-19-blood-test

Roth Downgrades Inovio On Valuation Despite Positive MERS Vaccine Data

Although Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc INO 10.04% reported positive interim results from Phase 1 and 2a of its MERS vaccine, the valuation of the stock already reflects this, especially given the increase in share count since the end of 2019, according to Roth Capital Partners.

The Inovio Analyst

Jonathan Aschoff downgraded Inovio stock from Buy to Neutral and maintained a $13 price target.

The Inovio Thesis

Inovio Pharmaceuticals’ share count will rise by over 10 million shares with its at-the-market capital offering of $150 million, Aschoff said in the Thursday downgrade note. (See his track record here.)
The company has announced solid interim results for its MERS vaccine INO-4700 and is scheduled to present details at the ASGCT conference in mid-May, the analyst said. Yet there are several drug makers, many of which are much larger than Inovio and have global commercial operations, that are working aggressively on COVID-19 therapies, he said.
It may take more than just positive clinical data to “come out among the group that materially benefits from treating the world against this virus,” Aschoff said.
https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/20/04/15923041/roth-downgrades-inovio-on-valuation-despite-positive-mers-vaccine-data