Found something to fill the 2 year gap between 2011 and 2013. In 2012 a Medical Counter Measures Consortium was formed and the particpant countries prolly won't be a surprise - UK, US, Canada and Australia.
"The Medical Countermeasures Consortium is a four-nation partnership involving the Defence and Health Departments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Consortium seeks to develop medical countermeasures to assist with all-hazard preparedness and response for the participant countries. The emphasis of the Consortium is on chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) threats affecting civilian and military populations and on emerging infectious diseases and pandemics.
Medical countermeasures include drugs, vaccines and diagnostics (devices and materials). Success in delivering these measures has broader implications affecting biosurveillance, force health protection and global health security.
Australian Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
Within Australia, official support for the Medical Countermeasures Consortium began in late 2012 with the signing of a national memorandum of understanding (MOU). The signatories to the MOU comprise the Department of Health and Ageing (represented by the Office of Health Protection) and the Department of Defence (represented by DST and Joint Health Command).
The strategic drivers of the Medical Countermeasures Consortium have been defined by the traditional issues associated with medical
countermeasure development and include burden sharing, non traditional development methods and overcoming the strategy gap."
Inserted into the timeline.
Attempting to build a thread specifically for adding to the timeline. Please quote, remove quote codes, and add to the last entry to keep it complete.
Corona Virus timeline
CHINA Nov, 2002: After its experience with the SARS outbreak in Guangdong Province in 2002, China implemented a rapid response protocol for infectious diseases. The protocol empowered the Health Ministry to assemble professional and managerial help from across the country, established an emergency response coordinating team, prepared funding and authorization for supplies, equipment and emergency health care facilities, anticipating that existing hospitals would be overwhelmed.
USA April, 2004: Patent Application by Chiron Corporation. Granted Nov 2006 (see entry for that date)
AUSTRALIA 15th Feb 2006 - The Australian Treasury publishes a paper called
"A primer on the macroeconomic effects of an influenza pandemic". Topics covered are:
- A Pandemic as a Shock to the Economy,
- Impact on Economic Agents (such as Households, Firms, Wages, prices, labour market, Financial sector, Government and Global effects).
- TRYM Modelling of Pandemic Shock (Step 1. World demand shock, Step 2. Deaths, Step 3. Labour force, Step 4. Confidence effects on consumption, Step 5. Business and dwelling investment, Step 6. Business labour demand)
- Policy Implications.
USA Nov, 2006: Patent SARS coronavirus. Abstract: An outbreak of a virulent respiratory virus, now known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), was identified in Hong Kong, China and a growing number of countries around the world in 2003. The invention relates to nucleic acids and proteins from the SARS coronavirus. These nucleic acids and proteins can be used in the preparation and manufacture of vaccine formulations, diagnostic reagents, kits, etc. The invention also provides methods for treating SARS by administering small molecule antiviral compounds, as well as methods of identifying potent small molecules for the treatment of SARS.
USA Sep 2008: Though the first cases of H1N1 swine flu were reported in California and Texas in late March, 2009, subsequent genetic analysis suggests that it began six months before it was first detected, in
September, 2008, at the start of the ‘flu season. The CDC admits, below, that earlier Covid-19 cases went undetected, too
Jan 2010: WHO re-defines definition of pandemic. According Wolfgang Wodarg, a German deputy who trained as a physician and now chairs the health committee at the Council of Europe...argued that the WHO, "in cooperation with some big pharmaceutical companies and their scientists, re-defined pandemics", removing the statement that "an enormous amount of people have contracted the illness or died" from its existing definition and replacing it by stating simply that there has to be a virus, spreading beyond borders and to which people have no immunity.
US May, 2010: Rockerfeller foundation publishes "
Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development" which details a pandemic virus used to implement 'A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback'
USA & NETHERLANDS Dec 2011 Researchers studying a potentially more lethal, airborne version of bird flu have suspended their studies
because of concerns the mutant virus they have created could be used as a devastating form of bioterrorism or accidentally escape the lab.
UK, US, Canada, Australia late 2012
"The Medical Countermeasures Consortium is a four-nation partnership involving the Defence and Health Departments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Consortium seeks to develop medical countermeasures to assist with all-hazard preparedness and response for the participant countries. The emphasis of the Consortium is on chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) threats affecting civilian and military populations and on emerging infectious diseases and pandemics.
Medical countermeasures include drugs, vaccines and diagnostics (devices and materials). Success in delivering these measures has broader implications affecting biosurveillance, force health protection and global health security.
Australian Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
Within Australia, official support for the Medical Countermeasures Consortium began in late 2012 with the signing of a national memorandum of understanding (MOU). The signatories to the MOU comprise the Department of Health and Ageing (represented by the Office of Health Protection) and the Department of Defence (represented by DST and Joint Health Command).
The strategic drivers of the Medical Countermeasures Consortium have been defined by the traditional issues associated with medical
countermeasure development and include burden sharing, non traditional development methods and overcoming the strategy gap."
UK, Saudi Arabia, Jordan Feb/Mar 2013 New Mystery Virus kills 9th Victim, This virus is in the family of coronaviruses, a new virus, previously unknown to mankind, Symptoms of the disease consist of respiratory distress, fever, coughing and difficulty in breathing.
USA Jul, 2015: Patent application lodged for attenuated coronavirus by
The Pirbright Institute (UK), application granted November 2018. Pirbright Institute names WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as stakeholders.
USA Oct 9, 2015: Release from United States Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick:
“The compound, which is a novel
nucleotide analog prodrug, works by blocking the viral RNA replication process,” said Warren. “If the virus can’t make copies of itself, the body’s immune system has time to take over and fight off the infection.”
In cell culture studies, GS-5734 was active against a broad spectrum of viral pathogens. These included Lassa virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus, Marburg virus, and multiple variants of Ebola virus, including the Makona strain causing the most recent outbreak in West Africa.
“This is the first example of a small molecule—which can be easily prepared and made on a large scale— that shows substantive post-exposure protection against Ebola virus in nonhuman primates,” Bavari commented. “In addition to 100 percent survival in treated animals, the profound suppression of viral replication greatly reduced the severe clinical signs of disease.”
USA March, 2016: Gates Foundation bets big on Moderna’s mRNA technology
"The announcement of the Gates Foundation grant comes just weeks after Moderna revealed two new partnerships focused on leveraging its mRNA platform.
Merck will license a vaccine program from Moderna to be used against an undisclosed viral target, and AstraZeneca entered a collaboration with Moderna to discover, co- develop and co-commercialize mRNA therapeutic candidates for the treatment of a range of cancers. Both agreements build on ongoing collaborations with the two pharmaceutical companies.
US, August, 2016:
The Climate Mobilisation: Victory Plan (Revised March 2019) Soros funded. The call is for the Fed to work with the Treasure to fund everything, for Big brother, Big Government, the end of fossil fuels, push for veganism and the New Green deal.
A plan drawn up ahead of the covid-19 pandemic just like the PNAC paper before the New Pearl Harbour aka 9/11 happened.
"How the U.S. could eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions at
wartime speed, contribute to a global effort to restore a safe climate, and reverse ecological overshoot through
massive WWII-scale mobilization. [...] A mobilization on this scale is the only rational response to the level of economic, security, and social risk posed by climate change. Anyone who looks at the evidence objectively would conclude that; and historians will look back and wonder why it took us so long to accept it. So be clear,
a mobilization on this scale is simply inevitable, with the only question being when we get started."
USA Jun, 2017: World Bank issues
Pandemic Bonds for emergency pandemic financing and pandemic insurance.
US, 15th May, 2018:
The Clade X Pandemic Exercise - The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted the Clade X pandemic tabletop exercise on May 15, 2018, in Washington, DC. The purpose of the exercise was to illustrate high-level strategic decisions and policies that the United States and the world will need to pursue in order to prevent a pandemic or diminish its consequences should prevention fail. (
Clade X Pandemic Exercise Trailer)
USA May, 2018: Fort Derrick BSL-4 Research laboratory water decontamination plant is flooded and leaks discovered. CDC suspends their operations.
USA May, 2018: The President
Fires the entire US Pandemic Response Team and does not replace it.
USA Nov 2018: Patent application for attenuated coronavirus (see July 2015) granted.
USA Apr, 2019: An
outbreak of severe
vaping-associated lung illness is exclusively confined to the United States, despite the fact that the majority of vapers live outside the US.
USA Jul 3, 2019: The CDC
halts research at Fort Detrick, citing “national security reasons” for not releasing information about its decision.
USA Jul 14, 2019: Chinese researcher
escorted from infectious disease lab amid RCMP investigation. Public Health Agency of Canada describes it as a possible ‘policy breach,’ no risk to Canadian public. The first Chinese to discover or warn about the Covid-19 outbreak?
AUSTRALIA Aug, 2019: Australia Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza released.
USA Aug, 2019: First Vaping Death Reported by Health Officials “Amid the lack of
information, investigators scrambled to find shared links to the respiratory problems. Officials said earlier this week that many patients, most of whom were adolescents or young adults, had described difficulty breathing, chest pain, vomiting and fatigue,” the precise symptoms of Covid-19 infection.
USA Sep 2019: Recently (2020), a team of Chinese researchers claimed to demonstrate that Covid-19 was born in September, 2019. The British researchers who had discovered the earlier H1N1 date
are not convinced.
ITALY Oct - Dec, 2019: Adriano Decarli, an epidemiologist and medical statistics professor at the University of Milan, said there had been a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in the areas of Milan and Lodi between October and December (See entry March 27, 2020)
USA Oct 18, 2019: The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted
Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. Event 201 simulated an "outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic that leaves 65 million dead.
CHINA Oct 27, 2019 At a peak of international tension and the ‘flu season in the northern hemisphere, on the eve of China’s biggest travel season, 300 American military servicemen visit Wuhan for the International Military Games.
USA / Israel, November 2019:
US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the coronavirus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday.
According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.
Information on the disease outbreak was not in the public domain at that stage — and was known only apparently to the Chinese government. US intelligence informed the Trump administration, “which did not deem it of interest,” but the report said the Americans also decided to update two allies with the classified document: NATO and Israel, specifically the IDF.
Last week,
ABC News reported that US intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a report prepared in November by the American military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence. It was unclear if that was the same report that was said to have been shared with Israel.
ITALY Nov 4, 2019: The Health Protection Agency and ASST begin collaboration with family doctors to
vaccinate residents of Bergamo against flu.
USA Nov 15, 2019: CDC posted job notices across the USA for a Quarantine Program Public Health Advisor on 11/15/2019 - 2 months before the Wuhan outbreak.
USA Dec, 2019. A Chinese medical researcher is arrested in Boston trying to take biological samples back to China. Zheng Zaosong, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, confessed to taking material from a lab in Boston. FBI Special Agent Kara Spice found 21 wrapped vials containing a “brown liquid” that appeared to be “biological material” (samples of post-mortem lung tissue look like ‘brown liquid’). Zheng’s roommate, also a researcher, told FBI agents that two labmates of Zheng had succeeded in getting specimens to China. China, presumably, now went on high alert.
USA/CHINA Dec 2019: Chinese researchers in the USA informed China’s Health Ministry of a novel Coronavirus outbreak there, triggering a readiness alert nationwide. The WHO describes what happened next, “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history…China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.”
CHINA Dec 26, 2019: Jixian Zhang detects four anomalous pneumonia infections in Wuhan and reports them to the provincial CDC the next day. The provincial authorities immediately inform the national CDC which prepares to implement the pandemic response protocols.
GERMANY Dec 25-Dec 31, 2019: Charité (clinic in Berlin)
starts developing test for the new Corona virus after first informal information reaches them. Later sends prototype to China, "unnamed colleagues" in China confirm that it works. WHO then publishes the test on its website as the first test. China develops own test, but demand is high elsewhere - even in Southeast Asia.
CHINA Dec 30, 2019: China’s national CDC notifies the WHO
CHINA Dec 31, 2019: WHO reports Zhang’s discovery to the world.
ITALY Jan 4, 2020: Residents of Bergamo queue to
receive vaccination against Meningococcus C after 4 deaths in the area
.
MALAYSIA Jan 5, 2020: Malaysia’s Assistant to the Prime Minister, Matthias Chang, speculates that the US is waging biological warfare on China.
USA Jan 6: Infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agrees, “We are on track to have a season like the 2017-2018 season,” when 80,000 Americans died of flu complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China due to the spreading coronavirus
CHINA January 7: China identifies the virus as 2019-nCov and confirms it five days later.
President Xi tells officials that the country is on a ‘war footing’
USA Jan 7: The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus
USA Jan 11: The CDC issued a Level I travel health notice for Wuhan, China
CHINA Jan 13: China makes the first 2019-nCov test kits available.
USA Jan 17: The CDC began implementing public health entry screening at the 3 U.S. airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan – San Francisco, New York JFK, and Los Angeles
USA Jan 19: A 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever. He disclosed that he had returned to Washington State on January 15 after traveling to visit family in Wuhan, China. Apart from a history of hypertriglyceridemia, the patient was an otherwise healthy nonsmoker. On January 20, 2020, the CDC confirmed that the patient’s nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs tested positive for 2019-nCoV. By Jan. 30, the patient’s symptoms had resolved, according to a New England Journal of Medicine paper. Snohomish County officials allowed him to leave home isolation three weeks later.
USA Jan 20: Dr Fauci announces the National Institutes of Health is already working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus
USA Jan 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to the coronavirus response
USA Jan 21: Donald Trump's coronavirus advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci,
gives an interview on Jan. 21 downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus, saying, "This is not a major threat to the people of the United States and this is not something that the citizens of the United States should be worried about right now."
USA Jan 23: The CDC sought a “special emergency authorization” from the FDA to allow states to use its newly developed coronavirus test
CHINA Jan 25: Construction begins on a 1,000 bed intensive care hospital in Wuhan.
CHINA Jan 26: China extends Spring Festival holiday to contain the outbreak.
USA Jan 27: The CDC issued a level III travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China due to the coronavirus
USA Jan 28: Harvard Chemistry Professor Arrested, Handcuffed, And Accused Of Lying About Ties To China. Charles Lieber, Chair of Harvard’s Department of Chemical Biology, led a Chinese research group focusing on the use of nanotechnology to identify viruses.
USA Jan 29: The White House announced the formation of the Coronavirus Task Force to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the President
USA Jan 31: The Trump Administration:Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency; Announced Chinese travel restrictions; Suspended entry into the United States for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the coronavirus. The Department of Homeland Security took critical steps to funnel all flights from China into just 7 domestic U.S. airports
USA Feb 3: The CDC had a team ready to travel to China to obtain critical information on the novel coronavirus, but were in the U.S. awaiting permission to enter by the Chinese government
USA Feb 4: President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus
CHINA Feb 5: First patients moved into new 1,000 bed intensive care hospital.
USA Feb 6: The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs
USA Feb 9: The White House Coronavirus Task Force briefed governors from across the nation at the National Governors’ Association Meeting in Washington
USA Feb 11: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expanded a partnership with Janssen Research & Development to “expedite the development” of a coronavirus vaccine
USA Feb 12: The U.S. shipped test kits for the 2019 novel coronavirus to approximately 30 countries who lacked the necessary reagents and other materials; The CDC was prepared to travel to China but had yet to receive permission from the Chinese government
USA Feb 14: The CDC began working with five labs to conduct “community-based influenza surveillance” to study and detect the spread of coronavirus
USA Feb 18: HHS announced it would engage with Sanofi Pasteur in an effort to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine and to develop treatment for coronavirus infections
CHINA Feb 23. Chinese scientists
found genomic evidence that the seafood market in
Wuhan was not the source of the novel coronavirus. Their genetic data suggests the virus was introduced from elsewhere and had already circulated widely among humans in Wuhan before December 2019, probably beginning in mid- to late November.
USA Feb 24: The Trump Administration sent a letter to Congress requesting at least $2.5 billion to help combat the spread of the coronavirus
USA Feb 26: President Trump discussed coronavirus containment efforts with Indian PM Modi and updated the press on his Administration’s containment efforts in the U.S. during his state visit to India
CHINA Feb 27: On
Taiwan TV a prominent virologist explained flow charts suggesting that the coronavirus originated in the US.
USA Feb 29: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed certified labs to develop and begin testing coronavirus testing kits while reviewing pending applications. The Trump Administration:Announced a level 4 travel advisory to areas of Italy and South Korea; Barred all travel to Iran; Barred the entry of foreign citizens who visited Iran in the last 14 days
USA Mar 3: The
Director General of the WHO announced: "While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease. Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected." This was patently false. The coronavirus mortality rate reported by the media as stated by Dr. Ghebreyesus is completely inaccurate as all subsequent numbers show. The CDC lifted federal restrictions on coronavirus testing to allow any American to be tested for coronavirus, “subject to doctor’s orders.” The White House announced President Trump donated his fourth quarter salary to fight the coronavirus!
CHINA Mar 4: February rail freight loadings rise 4.5% YOY.
USA Mar 4: The Trump Administration announced the purchase of $500 million N95 respirators over the next 18 months to respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Secretary Azar announced that HHS was transferring $35 million to the CDC to help state and local communities that have been impacted most by the coronavirus
CHINA Mar 5: Shipments to foreign JIT customers upgraded: government subsidizes upgrades from sea to rail delivery and from rail to air delivery.
USA Mar 6: Question: How did the virus come to the United States?
Answer: “
The first known patients in the U.S. contracted the virus while traveling in other countries or after exposure to someone who had been to China or one of the other affected areas. But now, a few cases here cannot be traced to these risk factors. This is concerning because it suggests the illness may be spreading across communities for which the source of infection is unknown, which we call community spread/transmission. Dr. Emily Landon, spokesperson, U Chicago School of Medicine. President Trump signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak. The bill provides $7.76 billion to federal, state, & local agencies to combat the coronavirus and authorizes an additional $500 million in waivers for Medicare telehealth restrictions
USA Mar 9: HHS staffers often weren’t informed about coronavirus developments because they didn’t have adequate clearance. He said he was told that the matters were classified “
because it had to do with China.”
USA Mar 9: President Trump called on Congress to pass a payroll tax cut over coronavirus
USA Mar 10: President Trump and VP Pence met with top health insurance companies and secured a commitment to waive co-pays for coronavirus testing
CHINA Mar 10: Government organizes and subsidizes bus, rail and air transport for two hundred million migrant workers to return to urban jobs.
US March 2020: United Nations publishes '
SHARED RESPONSIBILITY, GLOBAL SOLIDARITY:
Responding to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19' in alignment with Agenda 2030.
"The COVID-19 Pandemic is a defining moment for modern society, and history will judge the efficacy of our response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors to the benefit of our human family.
The United Nations global footprint at the national level is an asset for the global community to be leveraged to deliver the ambition needed to win the war against the virus.
With the right actions, the COVID-19 pandemic can mark the rebirthing of society as we know it today to one where we protect present and future generations. It is the greatest test that we have faced since the formation of the United Nations, one that requires all actors -governments, academia, businesses, employers and workers’ organizations, civil society organizations, communities and individuals- to act in solidarity in new, creative, and deliberate ways for the common good and based on the core United Nations values that we uphold for humanity."
USA Mar 11: White House
classifies coronavirus deliberations. The meetings at HHS were held in a secure area called a “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility,” or SCIF, usually reserved for intelligence and military operations. HHS has SCIFs because theoretically it would play a major role in biowarfare or chemical attacks.
USA Mar 11: President Trump: Announced travel restrictions on foreigners who had visited Europe in the last 14 days; Directed the Small Business Administration to issue low-interest loans to affected small businesses and called on congress to increase this fund by $50bil
USA Mar 12,: CDC director
Robert Redfield admits to a House Oversight Committee that some Americans who were diagnosed as dying from influenza tested positive for Covid-19 posthumously.
CHINA Mar 13: Chinese FM’s Lijian Zhao
demands US authorities reveal what they’re hiding about the origins of Covid-19. “When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make your data public! The US owes us an explanation!”
AUSTRALIA, 13th March, 2020:
National Cabinet creates a new federal government model
Formed at the Friday Council of Australian Government (COAG) meeting, the "wartime" national cabinet is made up of the nation's first ministers – the Prime Minister, premiers and territory leaders – to co-ordinate and deliver a consistent national response to COVID-19.
CHINA Mar 16: Ninety percent of businesses expected to resume full operations. All Apple stores open.
USA Mar 18: HHS temporarily suspended a regulation that prevents doctors from practicing across state lines
CHINA Mar 19:
No new corona virus cases.
USA Mar 19: President Trump Announced: Very encouraging progress shown by anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine for fighting coronavirus; Carnival Cruise Lines will make ships available for use as hospitals in impacted areas to use for non-coronavirus patients; Vice President Pence announced tens of thousands of ventilators have been identified that can be converted to treat patients; The State Department issued a global level 4 health advisory, telling Americans to avoid all international travel due to coronavirus; President Trump directed FEMA to take the lead on the Federal Government’s coronavirus response & visited FEMA HQ with Vice President Pence for a video call with Governors
USA Mar 20: The U.S. and Mexico agreed to mutually restrict nonessential cross-border traffic; Secretary Mnuchin announced at the direction of President Trump that tax day will be moved from April 15 to July 15 for all taxpayers and businesses; President Trump: Spoke with Sen. Schumer about coronavirus response & stimulus measures; Held a call with over 12,000 small business owners to discuss relief efforts; Announced the CDC will invoke Title 42 to provide border patrol with tools to secure the borders. The Department of Education announced it will: Not enforce standardized testing requirements for the remainder of the school year; allow federal student loan borrowers to stop payments without penalty for 60 days. Secretary Azar announced: FEMA is coordinating and assisting coronavirus testing at labs across the country; The CDC is suspending all illegal entries to the country based on the public health threat, via Section 362 of the Public Health & Security Act; sent a letter to all 50 Governors announcing that the federal government is buying and making available 200,000 testing swabs
ITALY, March 27. Italian scientists investigate possible earlier emergence of coronavirus
Adriano Decarli, an epidemiologist and medical statistics professor at the University of Milan, said there had been a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in the areas of Milan and Lodi between October and December last year.
He told Reuters he could not give exact figures but “hundreds” more people than usual had been taken to hospital in the last three months of 2019 in those areas - two of Lombardy’s worst hit cities - with pneumonia and flu-like symptoms, and some of those had died. (see entry Oct-Dec 2019)
US, March 30: The U.S. Just Signed A $450 Million Coronavirus Vaccine Contract With Johnson & Johnson
The Trump administration is spending nearly half a billion dollars on one company in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine.
That’s according to a $456 million order with Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceuticals arm Janssen, which specified a “new vaccine asset for 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19),” Forbes found. It’s the largest reported amount spent on a vaccine project to date, even though the pharma giant hasn’t yet started any clinical trials as other firms have.
Top
The deal was signed with the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) on March 27, 2020. It followed another order, made as part of the same contract with Janssen, for $150 million on March 20, 2020, for a “new antiviral” for COVID-19.
A spokesperson from Johnson & Johnson didn’t provide any more details on the specific order, but confirmed the $456 million award related to a collaboration with ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), as
announced in February. That work was built on previous contracts for developing countermeasures for other influenzas. The value of the coronavirus-specific work hadn’t previously been revealed and is the largest known contract for a coronavirus vaccine to date.
