15 October 2020

• Europe records the highest number of coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Source
• UNAIDS announces its full support for the proposal that the governments of India and South Africa submitted to the WTO, asking for a temporary waiver of certain TRIPS obligations to eliminate key barriers to health technologies that can prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19. According to Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, “If we continue with business as usual, we will fail in delivering fair access to COVID-19 treatments for all those in need. Yet fair access is the human right of everyone, no matter the colour of their skin, the money in their pocket or the country they live in.” Source
• Interim results from WHO-coordinated Solidarity Therapeutics Trial are released in a pre-print article. The study found that none of the study drugs (lopinavir/ritonavir, remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine and interferon) reduced length of hospitalization, initiation of ventilation or death. Source
• The Trump Administration endorses the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for “Focused Protection” – allowing young and healthy people to become infected with coronavirus and resumption of normal activities; with the assertion that the risk to all people, including those who are more vulnerable, will fall with the achievement of herd immunity – which they propose could happen when 10 to 20% of people become infected, a theory that has been dismissed by leading epidemiologists as “nonsense.” Sources 1,2

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