While the coronavirus has impacted millions of Americans across the United States, it has hit the elderly population particularly hard. In fact, more than 40 percent of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have been linked to long-term care facilities, according to a New York Times survey. In an effort to bring those numbers down, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has just launched a late-stage antibody treatment trial focusing on residents and staff at nursing homes.
"COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on nursing home residents," Lilly's chief scientific officer Daniel Skovronsky said in a statement. "We're working as fast as we can to create medicines that might stop the spread of the virus to these vulnerable individuals."
The trial is expected to enroll up to 2,400 participants who live or work at a facility and have recently been diagnosed with the disease. The trial will evaluate the safety and success of using LY-CoV555, a potent, neutralizing antibody that works against the spike protein of the novel coronavirus. The trial will look at whether a single dose of the antibody treatment reduces the rate of infection over four weeks as well as symptoms over eight weeks.
"The importance of these kinds of therapies for people like the elderly or immunocompromised is that they can provide the hope and the safety net that these people really need right now," said Andrew Adams, vice president of new therapeutic modalities & COVID-19 research at Eli Lilly, who is overseeing the trial. "I think people in those populations are really desperate and looking for something to help with the coronavirus."
Eli Lilly is taking its trial on the road with customized mobile research units that can travel directly to areas that are experiencing outbreaks.
"This is an interesting solution, to bring the medicine to these vulnerable patients," said Adams. "This lets us be flexible and move these trials around the country, tracking these trials as we come across them."
Adams said he is hoping Eli Lilly will have results on the efficacy of these antibodies in the fourth quarter of this year. Even if successful, though, he says research for a vaccine needs to continue.
"These have to be thought of as more of a bridge, where a vaccine provides long-term protection in terms of years of immunity, where we will provide hopefully in the range of months with these types of treatments. We hope this to be a short-term bridge to the long-term effective vaccination," he said.
Jurors in the trial against Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes have entered day six of deliberations. Holmes is accused of lying to investors about the functionality of a newly developed blood-testing technology. Andrew George, partner at Baker Botts, joined Cheddar to break down key points in the case and what the jury might be considering during their deliberations. He also noted that the rest of Silicon Valley, including Holmes' business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who is facing identical charges, is closely watching the outcome of deliberations — as it could set the tone for future regulations and Balwani's own trial.
According to researchers, the state of California's cap-and-trade program is currently being undermined by forest fires caused primarily by climate change. Over the past few years, trees that were set aside for the program have been releasing carbon as they continue to burn in fires. Climate Researcher and Policy Director at CarbonPlan Danny Cullenward, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
The CDC's latest update to its COVID-19 quarantine guidelines reduces the isolation period from ten days to just five for people who test positive but are asymptomatic. Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, regional clinical director at Carbon Health, spoke to Cheddar's Baker Machado about the new guidance. She noted that while the reduced quarantine time "makes sense," the CDC should also require that a person test negative after their quarantine and before interacting with the public. "There is science behind it. We know that the majority of illness happens, or transmission, one to two days before the onset of symptoms and then two to three days as you have symptoms. So there is science behind the reducement of the actual five days," she said.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
As the Omicron variant is fueling a surge in COVID-19 cases, parents and schools are faced with tough choices between absences and outbreaks. Matt Barnum, a national reporter at Chalkbeat, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Ron Gutman, Co-CEO of Intrivo, joins Cheddar News to discuss how the company is creating a test and tech solution for Covid testing called 2Gather, and how it's using data-driven digital diagnostics to make these tests widely available and affordable.
As 2021 winds down, the number of positive COVID-19 cases has surged dramatically with numbers not seen since the heights of the pandemic. Dr. Laolu Fayanju, the regional medical director at primary care provider Oak Street Health, joined Cheddar to discuss the numbers, how the healthcare system is handling the surge this time around, and what it means that the CDC just cut the quarantine time guideline in half for those who are infected. "These are incredibly high numbers because they reflect the transmissibility of the omicron variant," Fayanju said.
