Blogroll

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was looking at possibly making a coronavirus vaccine available free of charge.

Gilead Sciences Inc's two clinical studies of its potential coronavirus treatment remdesivir will wind down by the end of May, closing off a path of patient access to the antiviral medication, according to U.S. researchers involved in the studies.

Clovis Oncology Inc said on Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its drug Rubraca for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, whose tumors have a genetic mutation.

Amazon said on Friday it aims to gradually reopen its French warehouses from May 19 as it finalizes an agreement with unions and work councils to end a dispute over coronavirus protection steps that closed the sites for more than one month.

France's new coronavirus deaths reported on Friday were three times lower than 24 hours earlier while new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease kept on rising at the same slow rate of 0.4%, as the country continues to unwind its lockdown.

A keenly-watched COVID-19 vaccine will be priced to allow as wide as possible access to it, if it proves successful, and will be made at huge scale to keep costs down and supply up, said the Oxford University professor co-leading its development.

The following is a brief roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Spain imposed a quarantine on incoming overseas passengers on Friday and added new travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as the country's daily death toll falls.

Scientists and researchers are working at "breakneck" speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Authorities in Wuhan have tested over 3 million residents for the coronavirus in April and May and aim to test all of the rest, state media said, as the city at the epicentre of the original outbreak faces the threat of a second wave of infections.

The reproduction rate of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom is now somewhere between 0.7 and 1.0, government scientific advisers said on Friday, a slight rise on figures given last week.

Indonesia will require big internet companies to pay value-added tax on sales of digital products and services from July, a move that other countries may also adopt as they seek to boost revenues following the coronavirus pandemic.

(This May 14 story has been refiled with tweaked wording in paragraph 2 to make clear not all Palestinians marking Nakba were uprooted in 1948)

China is ready to put U.S. companies in an "unreliable entity list," as part of countermeasures against Washington's move to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies, the Global Times reported on Friday.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd , the biggest contract chipmaker, said it plans to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona in an apparent win for the Trump administration's efforts to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China.

Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's $12 billion investment in the United States will increase U.S. economic independence from China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement early on Friday.

The U.S. Department of Commerce on Friday announced that it was extending the Temporary General License that allows certain transactions with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for another 90 days.

The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies from global chipmakers, in an action that could ramp up tensions with China.

Foxconn's first-quarter profit plunged to its lowest in two decades, all but wiped out, after the coronavirus pandemic forced the Taiwanese firm to suspend manufacturing operations in China and knocked demand from customers including Apple Inc .

Wuhan, the original epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak in China, has tested over 3 million residents for the pathogen since April, and will now focus its testing efforts on the rest of its 11 million population, according to state media.