GVN SARS-CoV-2 Perspectives

There has been some very interesting news in the last several days that relate to vaccine development. The first of these is a report of results on the Phase 1 trials of the Moderna mRNA vaccine.  Most importantly, the vaccine appeared to be safe; no major adverse events were reported. Vaccines developed binding antibodies to…

Why should we concern ourselves with genetics and mutations in SARS-CoV-2? There are many reasons why these are of interest, including the rate at which mutations are occurring. One reason is that mutations can result in immune evasion. Changes can occur in recognition sites (epitopes) for antibodies and for cytotoxic T cells, and these could,…

Just to cut to the chase, we just do not know; but we may hope for one year and a half to two years, maybe less. And that will be great, but we have to distinguish between getting early evidence of efficacy and getting a vaccine ready for mass vaccination. But let’s consider background material…

Testing, Testing, Testing… The uncertainties about SARS-CoV-2 include critical questions such as what the death rate is for infected people, and what the infection rate is for the general public. This makes testing for infection of critical importance. There are numerous ways to establish the presence of infection. One is recovery of live virus, which…

An Evaluation of Remdesivir and Hydroxychloroquine Many years ago, efforts to contain HIV resulted in the first widespread successful use of antiviral drugs, including deoxynucleotide analogs such as AZT, able to terminate reverse transcription of viral RNA. The current coronavirus pandemic has spurred extensive efforts to identify effective and safe anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs. Recent reports have…