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Nevada’s northern and southern labs are out of coronavirus testing swabs, but officials expect to get more kits this week, including rapid-result test kits, Gov. Steve Sisolak said Monday...At a coronavirus briefing, Sisolak said the state has received 4,000 test swabs from the federal government and 3,000 reagent liquid kits that are used to test the samples...Sisolak said that while federal officials provided test components, “we did not get complete kits.”...State health workers continue to struggle to find enough kits to fill growing patient demands, and some clinics have shut down temporarily in Las Vegas as they wait for new supplies...READ MORE

Nevada’s request for a major disaster declaration, opening up additional paths for federal assistance under the national emergency proclamation, has been approved, Gov. Steve Sisolak announced Saturday afternoon...The declaration, which was requested by the state on Tuesday, will allow federal dollars to flow to Nevada to support Carson City and local governments’ ongoing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal funding is expected to be made available to governmental agencies and certain private nonprofit organizations for emergency protective measures...READ MORE

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday announced a national study led by the Mayo Clinic that will help hospitals offer an experimental plasma therapy for COVID-19 patients, and track how they fare...The therapeutic agents—convalescent plasma and hyperimmune globulin—are both derived from the blood of people who have recovered from the disease...What the history books call “convalescent serum” was most famously used during the 1918 flu pandemic, and also against measles, bacterial pneumonia and numerous other infections before modern medicine came along...Some hospitals are already administering convalescent plasma to critical COVID-19 patients, a so-called “compassionate use” that in this case is allowed by what the FDA calls an emergency Investigational New Drug authorization...READ MORE

Bristol Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences have been locked in a CAR-T patent fight, with BMS scoring a lucrative victory following a trial late last year. Now, Gilead has failed to persuade a judge to overturn the $752 million verdict—and the company could face bigger damages down the line... Judge James Otero rejected numerous arguments from Gilead’s Kite Pharma unit that patents held by BMS’ Juno Therapeutics are invalid, plus that procedural flaws in the legal process warrant a new trial...READ MORE

With pharmaceutical supply chains under immense pressure due to the novel coronavirus, China's role as a global ingredient producer has come under scrutiny. Despite fears the East Asian nation could shut off the tap for U.S. drugs, the FDA said it hasn't yet noticed major signs for concern...The FDA hasn't seen a shortage of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) sourced from China due to the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak but is "closely monitoring the situation," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn told Fox News...Hahn highlighted reported spot shortages of certain drugs due to increased demand but said China's API tap is still running, despite escalating rhetoric between the Chinese and U.S. governments. Hahn highlighted the Trump administration's push to develop "advanced" manufacturing stateside to help drive greater redundancy in the supply chain...READ MORE

Greece has suggested EU member states jointly buy patent rights for vaccines against COVID-19 and rapid tests under development to help ensure that if they are effective they are quickly distributed to those in need across the bloc...Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said finding a solution for a rapid distribution of vaccines, when they are available, is difficult but also urgent...At least 20 vaccines against COVID-19 are under development, many of which are subsidised by individual governments or charities...“Ideally, once their efficacy has been proven, such vaccines should be distributed as quickly and fairly as possible, and at a reasonable cost,”...Purchasing such patent rights would give global pharmaceutical companies incentives for further research and development and ensure that European taxpayers’ money was “spent sensibly...READ MORE

In the first study...suggested that obesity contributed significantly to incident long-term prescription opioid use...Joint pain, back pain, injury, and muscle/nerve pain were identified as the highest contributors to the excess use observed among adults with obesity...The second study...looked at the pain conditions underlying this increased likelihood of opioid prescriptions for individuals with higher BMIs...the risk of receiving prescription opioids increased progressively with BMI... Addressing the opioid crisis will require attention to underlying sources of demand for prescription opioids, including obesity, through its associations with pain...READ MORE

The decades-old drug that President Donald Trump has persistently promoted as a potential weapon against COVID-19 has within a matter of weeks become a standard of care in areas of the United States hit hard by the pandemic — though doctors prescribing it have no idea whether it works...Doctors and pharmacists from more than half a dozen large healthcare systems in New York, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Washington and California told Reuters they are routinely using hydroxychloroquine on patients hospitalized with COVID-19. At the same time, several said they have seen no evidence that the drug, used for years to treat malaria and autoimmune disorders, has any effect on the virus...READ MORE

...days after the FDA gave them (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine) an emergency approval to treat COVID-19...European regulators are limiting their COVID-19 use to clinical trials only...The decision comes as limited data—some of it questionable—rolls in about the drugs and their potential as COVID-19 therapies. A French study that's made headlines continues to draw fire, but brand-new data from China add to the positive case...In guidance...the European Medicines Agency restricted general use of the drugs—already approved to treat malaria and autoimmune diseases—to patients taking them for approved indications. COVID-19 patients can receive the drugs as part of clinical trials or through national emergency use programs...READ MORE

There are lots of numbers swirling around in the time of coronavirus: Confirmed cases of COVID-19, people tested, number of hospitalizations and, increasingly, new deaths...There are also other data points revealing the finer points of how the virus is affecting people, such as the age and gender of those who have tested positive and what pre-existing conditions people hospitalized after contracting the novel coronavirus have...But those numbers can be difficult to parse without context. Below, The Nevada Independent explores that data and puts it into context, walking through what we do and don’t know about coronavirus in Nevada, how Nevada stacks up against other states and projections for the future...READ MORE