Johnson and Trump hail drug breakthroughs as potential ‘game changers’

BORIS JOHNSON and Donald Trump talked up potential “game changing” breakthroughs in the scientific fight against coronavirus yesterday as they pushed to fast-track research.

The Prime Minister said the Government was in talks to buy a test as simple as a pregnancy check that could tell people whether they have had Covid-19.

Mr Trump, the US president, said he was greenlighting two drugs already on the market for other purposes for experimental use in the hope they can treat the virus.

Clinical trials of a vaccine developed by Oxford University could commence as early as April, Public Health England has said. Researchers at its facility in Porton Down, Salisbury, have collaborated with teams at Liverpool and Bristol universities to create an exact replica of Covid-19 for use in the testing process.

It said it will start evaluation of the Oxford vaccine next week, with clinical trials potentially commencing before the end of next month.

In America, a human trial began this week. Mr Johnson also said 25,000 tests a day for coronavirus would soon be happening in Britain but suggested that number could rise to 250,000.

Covid-19 has emerged so quickly that there is neither a vaccine to give immunity nor treatments that could help those who have caught it.

But at press conferences held a few hours apart, Mr Johnson and Mr Trump struck an optimistic tone respectively on scientific progress.

Mr Johnson said: “We are in negotiations today to buy a so-called antibody test, as simple as a pregnancy test, that can tell whether you have had the disease.

“It is early days but if it works as its proponents claim, then we will buy literally hundreds of thousands of these kits as soon as practicable because obviously it has the potential to be a total game changer.”

The test could better help the Government understand the full spread of the virus in Britain and also provide reassurance for those who may have

caught it and recovered. Mr Trump’s announcements focused on treatments. He said one drug called chloroquine – usually used for malaria – and another called remdesivir would soon be approved for use.

Both drugs are already approved for other purposes but are not known to work against Covid-19, meaning it is not guaranteed they will prove effective.

“I think it’s going to be very exciting,” Mr Trump said: “It could be a game changer, or maybe not.”

Mr Trump said he had ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “eliminate outdated rules and bureaucracy” so progress could “rapidly” be made.

He said getting such drugs approved normally takes months but the process had been sped up, adding that states would distribute them and prescriptions would be needed.

Dr Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner who stood next to Mr Trump during the briefing, offered a note of caution about the chance of a speedy breakthrough.

Dr Hahn said: “What’s also important is not to provide false hope.

“We may have the right drug, but it might not be in the appropriate dosage form right now, and it might do more harm than good.” It is unclear when the

drugs will be available or how widely they will be distributed. They are essentially at the testing stage.

Mr Johnson also mentioned testing for therapeutic drugs in Britain, saying that a coronavirus patient in the country is now involved in a “randomised” trial on potential treatments.

As for a possible vaccine, Mr Johnson said one was “rapidly coming down the track”.

A Scottish scientist leading a team of researchers in the US also said yesterday that one million vaccine doses against coronavirus could be available by the end of the year.

Dr Kate Broderick, 42, works at pharmaceutical giant Inovio in California, which is about to move to human trials and has been doing successful tests on animals.

On testing, Mr Johnson said: “We’re massively increasing the testing to see whether you have it now and ramping up daily testing from 5,000 a day, to 10,000 to 25,000 and then up at 250,000.”

Meanwhile, a powerful antibody that could neutralise the virus has been discovered by scientists at the Diamond Light Source, in Harwell, Oxon, in the blood of a patient who recovered from Sars.

Covid-19 shares many of the same features as the older virus.