Coronavirus Latest: Thursday, October 29

New, daily, U.S. coronavirus cases hit 80,000 on Thursday, with Regeneron posting positive results from its antibody cocktail trial, Moderna saying it is ‘actively preparing’ for a global launch of it vaccine, and Gilead announcing it sold $873 million dollars worth of its antiviral treatment. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins The Final Round to discuss the latest on the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Attention now to everything going on with the coronavirus. And some interesting news coming out of the airline space and on the rapid testing front. Anjalee Khemlani joins us now for the latest on all of that. Anjalee.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thanks, Myles. Yep, interesting on the airlines front is that United Airlines is offering-- is going to offer free tests for flights to London. And that's sort of an attempt to spur that international travel that has been halted.

We know that airports have been, and some airlines, have already been offering this. So this is just another one of those announcements to sort of tack onto that trend. So we'll see how much it actually does pick up, as most people remain pretty cautious and wary at this time.

Moving on to the vaccine front, we heard from Moderna. They have really been setting up and gearing up for this distribution of their vaccine, looking at when they might actually be ready to start distribution. Of course, we don't know the end date right now. But we do know that interim results are at least going to be available by November.

And so that would give us some indication of whether or not they'll be ready to go out. They already have more than a billion dollars in deposits for these vaccines for that demand, of course, that we know. And they are, of course, one of the two frontrunners in the country, along with Pfizer.

Meanwhile, in the treatment space, some interesting news out, actually. Regeneron with their antibody cocktail treatment, the one that President Trump did receive when he was in the hospital, is showing some promising results. And this comes a couple of days after we learned that Eli Lilly had to stop their trial for their single antibody treatment.

But they are also looking to sort of shift to less serious patients. But Regeneron did prove effective in more serious patients. And so that does prove hopeful for their emergency use authorization filing that is still in queue. We know that Eli Lilly, by comparison, does also still have their emergency use authorization in play, but is more focused on that less severe population. So it could that we have different treatments for different severities, which is what experts are really looking for.

Also now for Gilead, of course, their Remdesivir, the first approved branded drug to treat COVID, is already out there. They did report yesterday that they had $873 million in sales for the third quarter. And that's a pretty high number considering that, you know, the results for them and the sort of expert opinion on them is really mixed. We've heard that the World Health Organization in their solidarity trial found that it had very little effect on patients.

Meanwhile, here in the US, we've seen some trials as well, where the results have been mixed. So while the world-- the world is still sort of waiting to see what the actual benefits are. It's interesting that they've already been approved and can continue, basically, reaping in those rewards. Also important to note that the solidarity trial was not included in the FDA's decision to approve Remdesivir.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Anjalee Khemlani with all the latest going on, on the coronavirus. Anjalee, have a great weekend.