Gilead Sciences on Wednesday revealed some promising news about remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has been touted as a potential COVID-19 treatment.
The company said its own trial, as well one overseen by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, met its goals, with coronavirus patients reportedly responding well to the drug, reports CNBC. The data from the NIAID is still under wraps, though it's expected to be released at an upcoming briefing.
As for Gilead's trial, which involved 397 patients with severe COVID-19 cases, at least 50 percent of patients treated with a 5-day dosage of remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks. The overall mortality rate of the study was 7 percent, and relatively few patients developed bad side effects from the drug.
There are caveats, of course. The trial wasn't evaluated against a control group of patients who didn't receive the drug. It's also unclear if the high survival and improvement rates may have been natural recoveries from less severe cases. Still, the news is considered encouraging, albeit far from a "home run," as former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said after seeing the results. He also reiterated that even if remdesivir is effective, it's a treatment, not a cure.
The NIAID study is considered the most important test, Stat News reports, so the results will be watched closely. Read more at Stat News and CNBC. Tim O'Donnell
President Trump's taxes are safe from Congress for now, but not forever.
In a 7-2 decision in Trump v. Mazars issued Thursday, the Supreme Court didn't unilaterally say the House's subpoenas for President Trump's financial records were invalid. But it decided lower courts didn't look closely enough at the subpoenas and the separation of powers issues they entailed, sending the case back to those courts. That means a final decision on whether Congress can see those records will likely be delayed until after the November election.
Trump's appointees and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's liberal wing for the decision regarding the House subpoenas. The same group ruled in favor of the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in Vance v. Trump, allowing the prosecutor to access Trump's financial records for a grand jury case against him. Trump's legal team requested "temporary presidential immunity" from the records request while Trump is in office. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Trump can't block a subpoena for his financial records from a New York prosecutor, the Supreme Court has ruled.
In a 7-2 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. can see financial records from Trump's accounting firm, The Washington Post reports. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, who Trump nominated to the Supreme Court, sided with the majority, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, per CBS News.
"The president is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Prosecutors in New York had subpoenaed eight years of the president's personal and business tax records as part of an investigation into hush money payments made to two women who allege they had affairs with Trump. Trump's legal team requested "temporary presidential immunity" while Trump is in office.
Vance in a statement celebrated the Supreme Court's ruling, saying it's a "tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one — not even a president — is above the law." Brendan Morrow
Italy has hit an incredible milestone in its fight against COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, Italy has no more COVID-19 cases in its ICU ward, Italy's wire service ANSA reports. It's the first time the hospital can say that since it admitted its first coronavirus case on Feb. 23, 137 days ago.
Bergamo is at the center of Italy's Lombardy region, which was one of the earliest and hardest hit areas in the coronavirus pandemic. Italy at one point had the most COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, and Lombardy led that count, ABC News notes. Nearly 35,000 people have died in Italy due to COVID-19, giving it the fourth highest death toll of any country.
Meanwhile the U.S. has taken over as the coronavirus capital of the world, and shows no sign of slowing down. Where Italy announced 193 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the U.S. reported a record 62,751 — and proportional differences between the two countries' populations don't explain away that yawning gap. Kathryn Krawczyk
Another 1.31 million Americans filed initial unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
This number of new claims was less than economists expected, as experts were projecting there would be about 1.39 million claims, CNBC reports. Last week, the number of new jobless claims was a bit more than economists expected, topping 1.4 million. This news on Thursday somewhat lessened "concerns of a renewed downturn in the labor market," Bloomberg writes.
Additionally, continuing unemployment claims on Thursday fell "sharply," CNBC reports, declining by 698,000 to 18.06 million. Still, CNBC notes that this is the 15th week in a row that new initial unemployment claims have topped one million; before the coronavirus pandemic, the record for most claims filed in a week was 695,000.
These new numbers come after last week, the Labor Department released a better-than-expected jobs report for June, which showed 4.8 million jobs were added and the unemployment rate declined to 11.1 percent. Experts were quick to note, though, that this unemployment survey was taken in June prior to COVID-19 cases surging in numerous states. Brendan Morrow
The total number of U.S. coronavirus cases reached 3 million on Wednesday as officials confirmed a record 60,000-plus new cases over the previous 24 hours, and the national death toll rose above 132,000. States in the South and West continued to report spiking new infections. California and Texas both reported more than 10,000 new cases on Wednesday. U.S. deaths, which had been trending downward, rose by more than 900 for the second straight day, the highest level since early June, Reuters reports. Hospitalizations also have increased in the states where infections have jumped, including Florida, where 56 intensive care units this week reached capacity, and Arizona, where ICUs are rapidly filling up, too. Infections have risen in 42 of the 50 states over the past two weeks, according to Reuters. Harold Maass
A "massive search operation" is underway for the mayor of Seoul, who has been reported missing, The Associated Press reports.
South Korean police on Thursday said they're searching for Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon after he was reported missing by his daughter, according to Reuters. She says Park left "a will-like" message before he left their home, and she called police after not being able to reach him on his phone, which officials say is turned off, the AP reports. A signal from Park's phone was reportedly last detected in Sungbuk.
A government official confirmed to the AP that Park, who was elected mayor of South Korea's capital in 2011, didn't come to work on Thursday and canceled his schedules. Police say the search operation for Park consists of 150 officers, as well as a drone and a police dog. Brendan Morrow