ROCHE, GILEAD TO TEST DRUG COMBINATION
ZURICH: Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said Thursday that it isplanningtotestwhetheramixof its arthritis drug tocilizumab and Gilead’santiviraldrugremdesivir could treat severe cases of Covid-19 effectively.
Rochesaidinastatementthatit had joined forces with Gilead for a global phase III clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of using tocilizumab—sold under the brand names Actemra and Roacemtra—combinedwithremdesivir in hospitalised patients with severe Covid-19 pneumonia.
The clinical trial is due to begin in early June with approximately 450 patients participating in the United States, Canada and Europe, Roche said, adding that the randomised study would evaluate the drugs’ efficiency compared to a placebo.
Remdesivir has shown promise in a completed study and a separate trial is under way on tocilizumab’s potential against the disease, but Roche said there were indications that mixing the two could be more effective.
“We believe that combining an antiviral with an immune modulator could potentially be an effective approach to treating patients with severe disease,” Levi Garraway, Roche’s chief medical officer and head of global product development, said in a statement.
“We’re pleased to partner with Gilead to determine whether combiningthesemedicinescould potentially help more patients during this pandemic,” he said.
A US study published last week showed that remdesivir helped severely ill Covid-19 patients who required supplemental oxygen. An ongoing French study has meanwhile indicated that tocilizumab might help prevent extreme inflammation. Roche said the final results of that trial were expected in the next few months.
NEW DELHI: In less than 48 hours since the Android code of the Aarogya Setu mobile application was thrown open for review, at least 176 issues of various levels of severity was flagged by the software developer community to help the government identify and plug holes -- from the way it uses Bluetooth for contact tracing to typos in the text.
The number and nature of suggestions that poured in could make Aarogya Setu, now being used by over 100 million Indians, one of the first big government projects to be improved through public inputs, experts said.
“People have raised a lot of issues and while among these, many may be minor, what it really shows is participatory governance in the making,” said Srinivas Kodali, an independent researcher working on technology, data and governance.
“But it needs to be extended to other governance applications and IT systems,” he added.
The code of Aarogya Setu application for Android phones was shared at 12am on Wednesday on code-sharing website Github. A review of issues posted by people varied from concerns over the way the app deployed Bluetooth, typos in the text displayed by the application and suggestions for improvements.
“All suggestions are under review by the technical team,” said Abhishek Singh, CEO of Mygov.
An IT ministry official, who asked not to be named, added that the technical team has been instructed to notify Mygov in case of a serious issue .
So far, no “significant” development has been flagged, added the official.
However, some posts said that the version available for users to download through the Google Play store is not the version for which the code was made public.
One of the more serious concerns, flagged by Sydney-based developer Jim Mussared, concerned the way contact-tracing applications use Bluetooth to determine whether people have been in close contact with another person.
The vulnerability, which has at least been identified in Australia’s COVIDSAFE application, allows for long-term tracking of users and possibly enables other Bluetooth-based attack vectors, the global vulnerability listing of the problem showed.
“We have not confirmed that the issue exists in the Aarogya Setu app, we just wanted to reach out to the team so they could clarify for sure. Given that it affects other apps it seemed important to check with them, but we haven’t been able to get a reply by email yet,” said Mussared in an email.
The researcher added that there have been several issues in contact-tracing apps from multiple nations, and that many of these are due to using Bluetooth in this manner
NEWDELHI: The number of cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) that are yet to be assigned to any state by the Union government have increased by almost 19 times in the past two weeks, highlighting increasing issues in allotment of cases due to interstate migration.
According to the Union ministry of health and family welfare, a total of 4,332 cases are “being reassigned to states” as on Thursday. For context on the relative size of this number, only the eight worst-hit states in the country have reported more cases. On May 16, this number was only 230 and nearly 2,000 cases have been added to this category in just the last four days.
Senior government officials said that this category had to be created as several cases cannot be assigned to states immediately as they need additional verification and reconciliation.
With increasing interstate movement in the past few days, this number has started rising.
Officials at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), ministry of health and family welfare and integrated disease surveillance programme network compile case numbers after collectively confirming a case or a death due to Covid-19. The cases are classified to states or UTS after looking at the person’s the address in their government-issued identification documents such as voter ID cards, driving licenses and Aadhaar cards.
“It is an exhaustive process that requires 100% confirmation of the identity of the person by looking at government documents. Sometimes if a person, belonging to for example Delhi, develops symptoms in say Bhopal and gets tested there, then in spite of being a resident of Delhi the case will be counted of MP because that’s where the test happened. So it has to be clearly documented that it’s a Delhi resident but an MP case. These things take time because several cases fall under this category,” said a government official, requesting anonymity.
“We suspect that among the reasons could be that travel is being gradually opened up and people are able to move from one state to another for work or other reasons,” added the official.
Delays can also happen due to verification needed after samples are sent to laboratories, officials said. “Sometimes the surname is not mentioned on the chit or the spellings are wrong ; then local district surveillance officers are contacted to verify the identity of the person. Sometimes there is also confusion regarding whether the sample that has come is for diagnostic purposes or of a follow up case. Before final documentation is done all this information has to be clear, so it may take longer than usual with the number of cases going up,” said Dr Lokesh Sharma, ICMR official.
› We believe that combining an antiviral with an immune modulator could potentially be an effective approach to treating patients with severe disease. LEVI GARRAWAY, Roche’s chief medical officer and head of global product development