With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’

When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.

She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.

The current focus on curbing Covid-19 spread means there is less focus on routine market surveillance

Related: Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock

Trial of remdesivir shows fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays

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The first drug against Covid-19 to show promise in trials, reducing the time seriously ill people take to recover in hospital, is unlikely to be available widely in the UK soon, it has emerged.

Forty-six people in the UK have received remdesivir as part of the European arm of an international trial. Researchers would like to have given the drug to more patients but did not have the supplies.

Related: Coronavirus: what do scientists know about Covid-19 so far?

Drugmaker will manufacture and distribute vaccine if human trials are successful

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AstraZeneca, the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical group, is teaming up with Oxford University to manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine if clinical trials currently under way show it is effective.

News of the partnership boosted AstraZeneca’s share price, helping it to become Britain’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.

Related: The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine – a perilous and uncertain path

Exclusive: St Vincent’s in Sydney is the only confirmed location so far, as NSW Health negotiates with US pharmaceutical giant Gilead

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The US pharmaceutical company Gilead is finalising the location of five hospitals in Australia to receive the highly sought-after experimental coronavirus drug remdesivir.

The only confirmed location is St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, a major tertiary hospital and the centre of many of the New South Wales outbreak areas. A NSW Health spokeswoman confirmed the health department “has been engaging with Gilead on gaining access to the drug for Covid-19 patients”.

Related: Remdesivir: the antiviral drug is being touted as a possible coronavirus treatment – but will it work?

The partnership between AstraZeneca and the Jenner Institute should jolt our industry and banks

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There was some good news last week. Oxford University’s Jenner Institute announced it was teaming up with AstraZeneca to take a promising prototype of coronavirus vaccine into volume production by the autumn. Of course there are caveats – the institute’s confidence in its vaccine may not be validated by the trials that began last week.

Still it was heartening, after so much tragic incompetence, that a British university and a British company could forge a relationship of such potential national importance.

The piping through which emergency credit must flow is atrophied and weak

Gilead’s remdesivir, which has been hailed as one of the few truly promising treatments for COVID-19 at this early stage of the ongoing pandemic, has failed in its first randomised clinical trial, leaked data has revealed.

The European Medicines Agency’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) has confirmed that the risks from using Picato are too high to end its suspension.

The FDA has released a safety communication reiterating the need for doctors to closely monitor COVID-19 patients who are treated with either hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine.

English excess deaths from the coronavirus are comparable to the worst hit countries in Europe, according to a Sky News analysis.

Researchers in America have been studying famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

Italy has outlined its plans to ease the lockdown restrictions that were implemented across the country 7 weeks ago to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Sanofi’s MedQuadfi Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccine has scored FDA approval for the prevention of invasive meningococcal disease, becoming the first and only product available in the US for this indication in patients of at least two years old.

There is a duty to ensure access to innovative treatments for patients with unmet need, but a health service gatekeeper must commit to efficient use of limited resources. Matt Fellows looks at how real-world evidence could be the key to reassessing how we determine the value of these drugs and ensure their swift availability.

12 children have fallen ill across the UK with a new and potentially fatal combination of symptoms linked to COVID-19.

The South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety have approved a local trial to evaluate nafamostat’s effectiveness in COVID-19 patients.

NICE has recommended Janssen’s Stelara (ustekinumab) for the treatment of moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis (UC), a move which rows back on the Institute’s decision to reject the drug last year.

COVID-19 continues to dominate the news cycle as we all try to maintain business as usual under the shadow of the pandemic. Just about every area of society and business has been hit and Life Sciences is no exception; the impact of the virus has been felt in every corner of the industry and our monthly issues aim to cut through the confusion to shed a light on that impact.

Almost half of Americans believe that the coronavirus was created in a lab, according to an April survey of 6,300 people.

Novartis has revealed that the European Commission has moved to approve Cosentyx (secukinumab) for the treatment of active non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA) in adult patients.

Hydroxychloroquine continues to feature in coronavirus news. Rick Bright, the Director of BARDA, alleges he was pushed out of his position due to his pushback to the administration focusing on the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients. This came after the National Institutes of Health said coronavirus patients should not take the drug due to potential “toxicities.”

Scott Morrison, the Australian Prime Minister, has called for an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, as Australia becomes one of China’s most vocal critics of its response to the pandemic.

A Phase 3 study of Sanofi and Regeneron’s Libtayo (cemiplimab) as a monotherapy for advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been stopped early after showing strong overall survival benefit, it has emerged.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) wrote a letter to Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey urging the wider use of hydroxychloroquine, based on data they have collected.

Research into coronavirus cases in Shenzhen, China found that men were 2.5 times as likely to exhibit severe symptoms.

The first findings of two new studies have been revealed detailing the efficacy of Gilead’s antiviral therapy remdesivir in the treatment of patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

Nearly half of US states will have their ‘stay-at-home’ orders expire this week, paving the way for much of the US to relax its lockdowns.

A “landmark” partnership has been struck between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in the ongoing battle against COVID-19, with the former agreeing to aid in the development and large-scale manufacture of the latter’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine for the prevention of novel coronavirus infection.

A US federal judge has ruled that generic versions of the cancer treatment Bendeka infringe on four separate patents, and has delayed them from launching until 2031.

The search for a COVID-19 treatment has ramped up this week, with two new studies detailing the efficacy of Gilead’s antiviral therapy remdesivir in the treatment of patients hospitalised with coronavirus, while researchers in America have been studying famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, as a potential drug to help alleviate symptoms of the virus.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has given its recommendation for the approval of Kalydeco for the treatment of children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis in a new indication, Vertex has revealed.

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to last as long as two years and will not be properly controlled until two-thirds of the world’s populations have become immune.

Bristol Myers Squibb and Acceleron Pharma’s Reblozyl (luspatercept) has secured a positivr opinion from the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) for use in the treatment of transfusion-dependent anaemia in two adult patient populations.

The NHS has set out plans to step up its non-COVID-19 services over the next six weeks.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that there is evidence the COVID-19 coronavirus was created in a lab, despite US intelligence officials stating it probably occurred naturally.

British scientists are testing an experimental drug to help some of society’s most vulnerable fight off the COVID-19 coronavirus.

President Donald Trump has vowed to cut the US’s reliance on foreign drugs, singling out China and Ireland as countries he wants to stop buying pharmaceuticals from.

Gilead’s antiviral therapy remdesivir has shown tentatively promising efficacy in the race to find an effective treatment for COVID-19, one of the only therapies to do so at this early stage of the pandemic. Now, the FDA has invoked its Emergency Use Authorization powers to approve the drug for the treatment of patients hospitalised with the novel coronavirus.

Lonza Group AG and Moderna Inc have entered a deal to develop 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines a year.

"Every professional faces challenges. As a woman in industry, particularly in leadership, it adds another dimension to those challenges in how you present yourself."

Sanofi and Regeneron’s have lifted the lid on new topline data on their PD-1 inhibitor Libtayo (cemiplimab) in patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common skin cancer in the world, with around two million new cases diagnosed each year in the US alone.

The NHS’s coronavirus contract tracing app has been published to Apple and Google’s app stores with council staff and healthcare workers being invited to download it on the Isle of Wight today.

A new online reporting site has been launched by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) to track potential side-effects arising from the use of any therapies used to treat COVID-19, in a bid to build a knowledge base around safe treatment of the pandemic disease.

Researchers studying malaria in Kenya have discovered a microbe that blocks transmission of malaria from mosquitoes which could pave the way to eradicating the disease.

A French patient who suffered from pneumonia in December actually had COVID-19, it has been revealed.

The biotech company Galecto Inc have appointed Jonathan Freve as its Chief Financial Officer, and in his role he will lead financial operations including overseeing investor relations and fundraising efforts.  

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Ousted Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), Dr Rick Bright, alleges the Trump administration ignored warnings about the severity of the coronavirus.

Vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 continue to dominate the news, as two studies reveal "positive" data for Gilead's remdesivir in hospitalised coronavirus patients while Lonza and Moderna have entered an agreement to mass produce a vaccine.

Alexion has announced it is to acquire Boston-based blood disorder specialist Portola Pharmaceuticals in a transaction to the value of $1.41 billion in cash.

The FDA has moved to approve an oral tablet formulation of AstraZeneca’s Farxiga (dapagliflozin) to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and hospitalisation in adult patients with New York Heart Association’s functional class II-IV heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

South Korea says that remdesivir, traditionally used in treating Ebola, may not be effective enough in treating COVID-19 patients.