Trump likely to announce 'good things' on COVID-19 therapeutics 'in next two weeks'

Amid the continuous surge in COVID-19 infections in the United States which remains the worst affected country in the world, President Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration will announce some good news regarding therapeutics developed for COVID-19 infection within a couple of weeks.

"With respect to therapeutics, I can tell you that I think over the next couple of weeks, we will have some really, very good things to say... We will have some announcements on that over the next two weeks," Trump told reporters.

Potential COVID-19 vaccine

On Monday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a press release that US scientists have begun a phase three trial of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by America's biotechnology company Moderna.

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Earlier, during an event in Florida, Vice President Mike Pence also asserted that vaccines are showing such great promise and there is a high possibility of the vaccine being developed and made available by later this year or early next year.

The US has reported more than 4.2 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 146,000 deaths due to the Coronavirus, according to the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University.

Besides the US, India remains the second country with the highest caseload of the virus. With aggressive testing, India is making a new high in single day spike of COVID-19 cases every other day. However, India's own vaccine 'Covaxin' which is being developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR is under the phase 1 trials and Republic reported on July 26 that the results of Covaxin in phase 1 are encouraging.

ICMR has informed that approximately 1000 human volunteers are under clinical study in various test sites for the two vaccine contenders - COVAXIN (ICMR-NIC with Bharat Biotech) and  ZyCov-D (Zydus Cadilla). The trials phase-1 & 2 have kicked-off combinedly in ICMR shortlisted locations - New Delhi, Patna, Chennai, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Goa, Bhubaneswar, Rohtak, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam among others. 

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