• US President Trump announces in a tweet that he and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, have tested positive for coronavirus. The President and his administration have relied on Abbott’s ID now rapid test as their preventive strategy, allowing people with negative test results to go mask-less at meetings and official ceremonies, although it can fail to detect the virus in up to a third of asymptomatic people – and despite an FDA warning to have negative results confirmed by laboratory testing. Source 1,2
• President Trump is hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after experiencing fever, coughing and congestion; he is given REGN-COV2, an experimental antibody treatment, through a mechanism called compassionate use; he also received remdesivir, an experimental antiviral treatment for COVID-19. Sources 1,2
• AstraZeneca, Bayer, bioMérieux, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Merck KGaA, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, and Sanofi sign a pledge to support global access to their products through donations, not-for-profit price models and tiered pricing. Source
• A Russian health official announces that early clinical trials of a second experimental coronavirus vaccine, EpiVacCorona, have been completed. Source
