The California Biotechnology Foundation is committed to keeping you up to date about COVID-19 testing, treatment and prevention advancements. The following resources track what progress has been made as of May 13, 2022. Notable advancements include:

• Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine generates a strong immune response in children aged 6 to 11 according to recent data from researchers.
• Eli Lilly and Incyte’s treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, Olumiant, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Recent News

• US to share COVID-19 vaccine technology with poorer nations, says Biden
  Financial Times – May 12, 2022
  The US has agreed to share research tools and intellectual property for technology used to make COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization in a bid to make the treatments more widely available in poorer nations. President Joe Biden announced the move at a virtual global COVID-19 summit jointly hosted by the US, Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal. He said the US would “share critical COVID-19 technologies” through the WHO COVID-19 Technology Access pool. Health technologies owned by the US government that would now be made available included “stabilised spike protein that is used in many COVID-19 vaccines”, he said.
• Moderna Vaccine Provokes Strong Immune Response in Children 6 to 11
  New York Times – May 11, 2022
  Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine elicits a strong immune response in children aged 6 to 11, another signpost in what has become a long and tortuous road to protecting young children against the virus, even as cases again inch upward. Moderna requested authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for the vaccine’s use in this age group. But authorization, if granted, is unlikely to bump up the low immunization rates among young children by much. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been available for children aged 5 to 11 since November but just 28.7 percent had received two doses.
• FDA Approves Lilly and Incyte’s Olumiant For Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients
  BioSpace – May 11, 2022
  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given approval to Eli Lilly and Company and Incyte’s Olumiant, setting a precedent for COVID-19 treatments. The treatment is once-daily and orally administered. Before the approval, Olumiant was used to treat COVID-19 through the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Olumiant is the first FDA approved Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor, intended as a treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients that require supplemental oxygen, extracorporeal membrane oxygen (ECMO), or the use of a ventilator.
• 3 ways to get COVID-19 pills, if you’ve just tested positive
  NPR – May 11, 2022
  If you’ve just tested positive for COVID-19, and you have common risk factors for serious illness, there are now ample treatments available – generally at little or no cost – that could help you avoid the worst and recover more quickly from a mild or moderate case of COVID-19. Paxlovid, a five-day course of pills from Pfizer, is at the top of the list of recommended treatments. Studies from the drugmaker showed that – in unvaccinated people at risk of serious COVID-19 medical risk factors – Paxlovid was nearly 90% effective at cutting the risks of getting hospitalized or dying because of COVID-19.
• The Promising Treatment for Long COVID-19 We’re Not Even Trying
  The Atlantic – May 10, 2022
  That Paxlovid may quench anyone’s long-COVID-19 symptoms is itself a bit mysterious: The drug works best when delivered fast and early, futzing with the virus’s ability to xerox itself inside human cells and making it easier for the immune system to jettison the bug. But long COVID-19 can take weeks or months to manifest, and hasn’t been proven to have a persistent viral source. Experts still don’t know how common, or lasting, post-pill reprieves might be; they can’t say with confidence why the drug could have palliative effects, or—if said effects are substantiated—which long-haulers stand to benefit most
• Why COVID-19 vaccine boosters may be more important than ever
  CNN – May 10, 2022
  With waning immunity and COVID-19 that seems to become more infectious with each new variant, the Biden administration predicts that up to 100 million more people could get COVID-19 in the fall and winter. That estimate makes it crucial that as many people as possible get booster shots of COVID-19 vaccine, experts say. And if you’re eligible, it’s a good time to get a second booster. Less than half of eligible Americans — only about a third of the total US population — have gotten a first booster dose, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only about 10 million people have received a second booster, which is authorized for people 50 and older, along with those who are 12 and older who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.
• San Diego’s Cardea Bio nets Gates Foundation grant to uncover COVID-19, malaria and other diseases via breath
  The San Diego Union-Tribune – May 3, 2022
  San Diego-based Cardea Bio, which is integrating biology with modern electronics, said it has received a $1.1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund work that someday could detect infectious diseases like COVID-19 and cancer via odor. Targeting emerging countries, the goal of the project is to verify that Cardea can deliver bio-sensing receptors that work as an “electronic nose” through integration into its Biosignal Processing Unit platform, or BPU. If successful, the project could bring inexpensive, easy-to-use handheld diagnostics to parts of the world that don’t have access to medical testing facilities.