(WASHINGTON) — Justice Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for COVID-19, the Supreme Court said on Friday.
Kavanaugh tested positive during a routine test ahead of an investiture ceremony for Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
He has been vaccinated since January and currently has no symptoms, the court said. His family has also tested negative.
The court said Kavanaugh was informed Thursday evening that he tested positive.
“On Thursday, per the Court’s regular testing protocols, Justice Kavanaugh had a routine Covid test ahead of Justice Barrett’s investiture on Friday. On Thursday evening, Justice Kavanaugh was informed that he had tested positive for Covid-19,” the court’s spokesperson Patricia McCabe said in a press release.
“As a precaution, Justice and Mrs. Kavanaugh will not attend Justice Barrett’s investiture this morning,” McCabe said.
Barrett is scheduled to have an investiture photo op on Friday coming down the steps of the Supreme Court Building with the Chief Justice and her husband.
The news comes three days before the court is scheduled to begin its new term on Monday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Framing Britney Spears helped awaken the masses about the controversy behind Britney Spears’ 13-year conservatorship. Now, the second part of the explosive documentary has just dropped.
The makers behind FX and Hulu’s The New York Times Presents Controlling Britney Spears, Samantha Stark and Liz Day, spoke with Entertainment Tonight about what shocked them most about diving further into Britney’s legal woes.
Both say their interview with Alex Vlasov, who worked with the singer for nearly a decade and was a former agent of the security firm Black Box, is one of the most chilling segments of their film. That’s because Vlasov is the one who claimed Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, bugged Britney’s room and would secretly monitor her emails, phone calls and private conversations.
Vlasov reportedly turned over several recordings allegedly taken by Jamie to authenticate his claims.
“We have a copy of the recording, which we reviewed to authenticate it and make sure it was real,” said Day. “It was really disturbing to listen to. To imagine Britney being recorded secretly in her bedroom, that is just really disturbing.”
Stark added the two “made repeated” efforts to get Jamie’s side of the story, and said he “never denied the allegations that they wiretapped Britney’s bedroom.”
Jamie’s lawyer, Vivian Thoreen, claims in a statement to The New York Timesthat “All of his actions were well within the parameters of the authority conferred upon him by the court.”
However, Britney’s lawyer Mathew Rosengart believes the elder Spears violated his client’s “privacy rights” and said, after Jamie was suspended as conservator on Wednesday, that “Mr. Spears has crossed unfathomable lines and he must be held accountable.”
As for when the 13-year conservatorship will end, a hearing to determine that has been scheduled for November 12. Another hearing on December 13 will focus on financial and accounting matters.
It’s the weekend Sopranos fans have been desperately waiting for — the prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark is out today.
Instead of picking up where The Sopranos ended nearly 15 years ago, the movie delves into the past and explores the life of a young Tony Soprano and the circumstances that led him to become the DiMeo crime family’s boss.
Jon Bernthal plays Tony Soprano’s father, known as Johnny Boy, in the film. He tells ABC Audio that fans of the original series shouldn’t treat the movie like two extra episodes of the award-winning HBO series.
“It’s absolutely its own thing. And I think that’s very smart. Those are shoes that are impossible to fill,” Bernthal explained, while keeping details about why that is to himself. “That’s something that exists on its own.”
There are whispers the movie does address what really happened to Tony Soprano in that controversial cut to black series ending, but don’t ask Bernthal to reveal what really happened to James Gandolfini‘s character.
“I think there’s a there’s a myriad of potential answers. And, yeah, I got no interest in answering it,” he teased.
And while The Many Saints of Newark will delight fans of the original series, Ray Liotta, who plays “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti in the film, says the movie will also entertain those who haven’t tuned into the series –and that’s coming from someone who hasn’t watched The Sopranos.
“You don’t have to have been a fan of the show or even watched the series in order to appreciate what goes on in this movie,” Liotta assured. “You don’t have to be a big Sopranos fan or know everything that happened in order to appreciate and like it.”
(WASHINGTON) — Women’s rights advocates are preparing to march again in Washington, D.C., and other cities across the U.S. this weekend, with a focus on reproductive rights.
The fifth annual Women’s March will take place on Saturday, a date specifically chosen for its proximity to the start of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term — Oct. 4, the first Monday in October.
Women’s March organizers said the restrictive abortion law that went into effect in Texas in September motivated them to act now.
The law, which bans nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, went into effect after the Supreme Court rejected a request by Texas abortion providers to block the law as legal challenges continued.
“When the Supreme Court rejected an emergency request to block Texas’s abortion ban, they effectively took the next step towards overturning Roe v. Wade. Simply put: We are witnessing the most dire threat to abortion access in our lifetime,” reads a statement on the Women’s March website.
The Supreme Court also is scheduled to hear in December oral arguments in a case that could be the most consequential abortion rights case in decades. The state of Mississippi is asking the justices to overturn longstanding legal precedent that restrictions on abortion access before a fetus is viable outside the womb — around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy — are categorically unconstitutional. Mississippi wants to ban abortions after 15 weeks, or even earlier.
Reproductive rights advocates call the case, which centers around Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s last remaining abortion clinic, an existential threat to American abortion rights not seen in nearly 50 years.
This year’s protest will follow in the footsteps of Women’s March protests that have taken place every year since 2017, when the first march drew more than a million people to various locations across the U.S. the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
The protests have dwindled in size since the first march, but have continued across the country.
As women take to the streets this year to march, in addition to battles over reproductive rights, women have also experienced disproportionate job loss during the coronavirus pandemic and faced greater caregiving burdens than male counterparts, data shows.
Women’s March organizers said that in addition to the Washington, D.C., march, there will be smaller marches from Bangor, Maine, and the way to Seattle.
The Washington march will begin at Freedom Plaza and continue along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Supreme Court building.
Busy Phillips, who has spoken publicly about having an abortion at age 15, is among the speakers confirmed for the Washington march.
Scarlett Johansson‘s Periwinkle Entertainment and The Walt Disney Company have settled their dispute regarding the release of Black Widow.
Johansson filed suit last month against Marvel Studios’ parent company, Disney, claiming that the studio’s decision to simultaneously release Black Widow on Disney+ and in theaters was a breach of her contract, which guaranteed Black Widow an exclusive theatrical window before it hit the streaming service. The suit further claims Disney’s decision to do otherwise cost Johansson millions in potential earnings.
“I am happy to have resolved our differences with Disney. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together over the years and have greatly enjoyed my creative relationship with the team,” the actress said in a statement on Thursday. “I look forward to continuing our collaboration in years to come,”
Alan Bergman, Chairman of Disney Studios Content, added, “I’m very pleased that we have been able to come to a mutual agreement with Scarlett Johansson regarding Black Widow. We appreciate her contributions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and look forward to working together on a number of upcoming projects, including Disney’s Tower of Terror.”
Neither side gave any indication of how much money was involved in the settlement.
ScarJo served as an executive producer on Black Widow, and therefore had profit participation “points” tied to the film’s box-office performance. The movie grossed $367 million at the box office. However, Disney revealed in August that the movie had grossed $125 million on streaming, which some assert detracted from the film’s box-office earnings potential, and Johansson’s bottom line.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, parent company of ABC News.
Harry Styles went above and beyond to make one pregnant fan’s dream come true — by stopping his concert to help her reveal the gender of her unborn child.
Billboardreports the “Adore You” singer was performing at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday, when he noticed a pregnant female fan and her friend holding up some interesting signs.
The pregnant fan held up a black sign that read in multicolored letters, “I’m having a baby please make it your business” — a direct reference to the “I’m having your baby, it’s none of your business” lyric from Harry’s 2017 song, “Kiwi.”
As for her friend, she had a sealed envelope with the baby’s gender inside, which she handed to Styles during his show. Styles, wearing a glittering taupe tuxedo, opens the envelope as the crowd counts down to the big reveal.
The British singer then happily announces that the fan is having “a little baby girl” before dropping to his knees while pretending to sob.
The stadium lights up in pink as he emotionally asks the fan, “That’s what I wanted! Is that what you wanted?”
Styles wishes his fan a heartfelt “congratulations” as the crowd erupts into another wave of cheers.
The sweet moment was captured on video, which was shared by the fan account 1D Updates.
The “Watermelon Sugar” singer is currently on the North American leg of Harry Styles: Love On Tour, with another show slated for tonight at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
(WASHINGTON) — In today’s world of permanent campaigning, “leadership PACs” — political action committees established by individual politicians — have served as an invaluable vehicle for members of Congress to support their political allies.
Leadership PACs were approved in 1978 as a way for politicians to raise money and then make contributions to other candidates. The money cannot be used on a politician’s own election expenses.
But a new report by the good-government groups Campaign Legal Center and Issue One shows that numerous lawmakers have been dedicating most of their leadership PAC spending to overhead and fundraising for the PAC — often at fancy restaurants and luxury resorts — while spending comparatively little on actual contributions to other candidates or political allies.
During the 2020 election cycle, there were at least 120 members of Congress whose leadership PACs reported that less than 50% of their spending was in the form of political contributions to other candidates, political allies, or parties, according to the report.
Of those, 43 members’ leadership PACs devoted less than 25% of their overall spending to political contributions during that cycle, while a handful of members’ leadership PACs spent more than five figures without making any political contributions whatsoever.
Early in 2019, then-North Carolina GOP Rep. George Holding’s leadership PAC made two such contributions, giving a total of $5,000 to a fellow North Carolina Republican House hopeful running in a GOP primary.
But a few months later in December, Holding announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020 — and that $5,000 remained the PAC’s only political contributions throughout the 2020 cycle. All the while, Holding’s PAC continued to rake in contributions from supporters, while the PAC spent nearly $200,000 on airfare and car services and on food and drink at restaurants and clubs, including the exclusive East India Club in London and the Union Club in New York City, according to the report.
The report notes that none of the donor funds beyond the $5,000 contributions went toward supporting Holding’s political allies.
“Most members of Congress use their leadership PAC for their intended purposes — aiding other candidates, their parties, and political allies,” Issue One Research Director Michael Beckel told ABC News. For a typical member, Beckel said, 70% of their leadership PAC’s expenditures go toward political expenditures.
But other members use their leadership PAC funds to spend lavishly on expensive meals, trips to elite resorts and rounds of golf at premier courses, which is “purportedly done for the purpose of political fundraising,” Beckel and his co-authors wrote in the report. However, the authors wrote, “this explanation rings hollow when just a fraction of the money raised goes toward political contributions.”
“Some politicians are simply raising money at one posh location to pay for the next fundraiser at the next fancy destination — creating an endless fundraising cycle at luxurious restaurants and resorts, much of which is paid for by special interest money, with no cost to lawmakers’ own pocketbooks,” the authors wrote.
When Holding launched his leadership PAC, Conservative Roundtable, in 2014, it devoted nearly 70% of its funds to supporting fellow Republicans running for office that year, past disclosure filings show. But over the years, according to the report, the PAC gradually spent less and less on supporting GOP allies. Out of the $202,000 the PAC spent in the last election cycle — besides the $5,000 in political contributions and the funds spent on social clubs, airfare and lodging — the bulk of the PAC’s expenditures went to a fundraising firm.
Holding’s PAC did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment, but the then-congressman told CQ Roll Call in a statement last year that as co-chair of the U.K. Caucus and co-chair of the British American Parliamentary Group, he “traveled to London at no expense to the taxpayer for the purpose of developing and maintaining a leadership role on U.K./U.S. issues.”
“In addition, I have developed a supporter base with the American expatriate community in the U.K,” Holding said in the statement. It’s unclear from the report or from committee disclosure filings if his trips to London were paid for by his leadership PAC.
GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s leadership PAC, Reinventing a New Direction, spent only 12% of its expenditures on political contributions out of the nearly $1 million it spent during the 2020 cycle, according to the report, with a big chunk of the PAC’s money going to political research and consulting, as well as to fundraising.
Tens of thousands of dollars of Paul’s PAC money also went to travel, lodging and meals at high-end establishments, including The Breakers, a five-star resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and BLT Prime at former President Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C. Paul’s PAC also spent money on tickets at Nationals Park, home of Washington’s Major League Baseball team, and at Karlštejn Castle, a tourist destination outside Prague in the Czech Republic, according to the report.
Paul’s spokesperson did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore’s leadership PAC also reported using just 12% of its total spending during the 2020 election cycle on direct political contributions, while spending tens of thousands of dollars on fundraising, lodging and airfare. The PAC spent roughly $32,000 on meals and catering, including thousands of dollars at steakhouses and for delivery services, and spent thousands of dollars on event tickets purchased through Live Nation, StubHub and Ticketmaster, according to the report.
Moore’s PAC did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
While some PACs may be skimping on direct political contributions to political allies, a number of lawmakers say they’ve found other ways for their PACs to support their political interests.
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’ leadership PAC, while spending just 18% of its $2.2 million in total expenditures on directly supporting other Republican candidates and political groups in the 2020 cycle, spent more than 70% of its funds on media buys and online advertising promoting Republican political causes.
Cruz’ spokesperson told ABC News that “in addition to making direct contributions to candidates, his strong fundraising has permitted Jobs, Freedom & Security PAC to go above and beyond the typical Leadership PAC by investing heavily in advertisements and messaging that empower and help give voice to the conservative movement.”
Cruz’ PAC also spent more than $12,000 for facility and equipment rentals from the Houston Astros baseball team, as well as big sums on airfare and boutique hotels, according to the report.
Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton’s two leadership PACs reported spending just 8% on political contributions out of their combined total expenditures of $1.7 million during the 2020 cycle, with the vast majority of their funds being spent on salaries, consulting and fundraising. In contrast, during the 2016 cycle, the majority of Moulton’s Serve America PAC money — more than 84% — went to other Democratic campaigns, past campaign disclosure filings show.
Moulton, however, told ABC News in a statement that his PACs’ political contributions to Democratic allies were lower in the 2020 election cycle because he had been mobilizing his donors to contribute directly to other candidates rather than asking them to cut a check to his PACs to then be forwarded along. Through this strategy, Moulton said, his team raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for then-candidate Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and for Democratic Georgia Senate candidates.
(NEW YORK) — A breast cancer survivor has created a mobile app, called Feel For Your Life, to help women conduct breast self-exams.
“I found out there were three reasons women weren’t doing self exams,” Jessica Baladad, 36, told Good Morning America. “They were afraid of finding something and not knowing what to do, they weren’t comfortable with their bodies, and they didn’t know how because no one’s ever showed them or talked to them about the importance of a exam, so I thought, ‘I need to advocate for this.'”
According to the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer is one of the three most common cancers in women. The NCI estimates there will be more new cases of female breast cancer than any other cancer in 2021, with a projection of 281,550 new cases.
Breast cancer is primarily detected through a mammogram, ultrasound, MRI or biopsy, and usually involves a combination of testing to ensure an accurate diagnosis. Mammograms can often detect tumors before a lump appears, so screenings are crucial for early detection.
“As a supplementary tool for women of all ages, self-breast exams can increase women’s awareness of their body and what their breasts normally feel like,” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, breast medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, told GMA. “As a screening strategy, it helps women identify any concerning findings such as new changes in the shape, skin, or nipple as well as any concerning lumps which may require further imaging and work-up.”
Most guidelines recommend women begin routine annual screenings once they’re 45 years old; a recommendation that can leave younger women vulnerable to missing early detection of the disease.
For those under the recommended age for screening, Comen said that self-exams can have an important role in picking up breast abnormalities and prompt patients to seek out further care from their doctor.
“This is particularly true for women under the age of 40, for whom there’s no routine breast cancer imaging screening recommendations,” she said. “Since most of these women aren’t indicated to have mammograms, many of these cancers are actually detected by women themselves, through self-breast exams.”
Baladad has done regular self-exams ever since she had surgery to remove a benign fibroadenoma tumor in her breast when she was 18 years old, she said.
“I had a pain in my breast and I ran to the bathroom real quick, right before class, and I noticed there was a lump and it scared me,” she recalled, adding that she immediately went to health services after class and it was from there that doctors discovered the tumor. “It was that experience that got me into the habit of doing self-breast exams throughout the rest of adulthood.”
A personal connection to breast cancer
Breast cancer runs in Baladad’s family on her father’s side, with her great-grandmother, grandmother, five grand-aunts, and two aunts all having lived with the disease, she said. Fifteen years later after that initial scare, Baladad was diagnosed with breast cancer herself.
In March 2018, Baladad said she didn’t do her routine self-exam that month because she was scheduled to see her nurse practitioner around then.
“I thought, ‘Who better than my practitioner to do a clinical breast exam?’ and when I saw her, she didn’t say anything about a lump to me so I thought I was good to go,” she said.
When Baladad did a self-exam in the shower just two weeks after her appointment, however, she found a lump in her left breast.
“I just started freaking out like ‘This is it, it’s cancer,'” Baladad said. “But then I thought, ‘Wait. I’m working out in the gym almost every day. I take care of myself. I eat well. I just saw my doctor, surely she would’ve said something about this.'”
After calming herself down, Baladad went on with her life. But when an acquaintance posted about shaving their head due to having breast cancer, Baladad said she decided to get her own lump checked out in August 2018.
“She was a year older than me,” she said. “If she’s young enough to get breast cancer then I’m young enough to get breast cancer.”
This time, Baladad went to a different doctor and had a mammogram, ultrasound and a biopsy. The lump was confirmed as breast cancer, making her one of the millions of women in the United States living with the disease at the time.
“I found out later that my original practitioner didn’t tell me about the lump in my breast because she thought I was too young to have breast cancer and she thought I’d be fine,” Baladad, who was 33 when diagnosed, said. “A self-exam saved my life.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most breast cancers are found in women 50 and older, though age is not the ultimate determining factor. In 2018, CDC data found that there were 184 new cases of breast cancer in women ages 20-24; 1,173 in ages 25-29; and 3,300 in ages 30-34, with the number of cases continuing to increase thereafter.
“Most breast cancers are identified in women over age 50. That being said, younger women can get breast cancer too,” Comen said. “Any woman, or any patient for that matter, who has an inkling that they need a second opinion, should get a second opinion. Intuition and trusting your doctor are critical for a therapeutic doctor-patient relationship.”
Fortunately, Baladad’s cancer has been in remission since May 2019 — but the road there wasn’t easy.
“I did 16 rounds of chemo, a double mastectomy, 24 rounds of radiation, a hysterectomy, and back in February I had a 10-hour flap reconstruction procedure done where they took fat, tissue, and blood vessels from my abdomen and placed them in my chest,” she said. “I have phase two of that surgery in October.”
From a social media project to app launch
Baladad originally created Feel For Your Life as a social media project during her cancer journey, where she would share her story, as well as cancer statistics, and encourage women to perform self-exams and get checked out by a doctor.
“One night I was in the shower literally watching my life go down the drain as I watched my hair come off my head and the idea just kind of came to me,” she said. “I felt like I was called to do it.”
The idea to build an app came last year after Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Baladad said she “wanted to reach more women” and thought the way to do so was through an app.
Over the following months, she researched how to build an app, the features she wanted it to have, and consulted tech-savvy people who helped her with the process. It officially launched on Apple and Android app stores in September 2021.
“I just thought about [the app] from a woman’s experience, and I wanted it to be really intuitive for how a woman may want to use it,” she said. “I’m not a coder or developer, I’m an advocate. I look at the app as an advocacy tool that women can use to communicate with their physicians. I’m not a doctor and I’m not trying to be a doctor — my mission is to help women advocate for their breast health.”
The information on the app is sourced from the CDC, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and Johns Hopkins Medicine. There are instructions on how and when to do a self-exam and information on genetic testing and counseling, types of breast screenings, risk-reducing surgical procedures, breast reconstruction options and more.
Other features of the app include the ability to set reminders for self-exams and a space to track any changes. There’s also a section where users can share their advocacy wins with Baladad, plus a community feature where users can talk to others about what they’re doing.
“I also have reminders throughout the app that if you find anything, please talk to your doctor,” Baladad said.
Baladad hopes to one day include a telehealth feature within the app, where users can connect with medical professionals in real time.
“If a woman is doing a self-exam and she finds a lump, she may get scared or have anxiety,” she said. “I want to be able to connect her with a physician and they can put her on the right track to help her [with] getting the answers that she needs.”
(WASHINGTON) — A federal court on Thursday ordered the Federal Election Commission to rule on pending complaints that allege the National Rifle Association used shell entities to illegally coordinate campaign spending with federal candidates, including with the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
In 2019, the Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center Action sued the FEC on behalf of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group led by former Democratic Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, after the federal agency failed to act on multiple complaints that accused the gun rights group of perpetrating what plaintiffs called “an elaborate scheme … to unlawfully coordinate with candidates it supports for federal office.”
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday ordered the FEC to take action on the complaints within 30 days.
In the 2019 suit, the plaintiffs alleged that the NRA used a “network of shell corporations” to circumvent contribution limits and coordinate approximately $35 million in ad spending with the campaigns of at least seven Republican candidates over the last three election cycles, “thereby making millions of dollars of illegal, unreported, and excessive in-kind contributions.”
The complaint alleged that while the NRA deliberately circumvented FEC rules that prohibit vendor coordination between campaigns and outside groups, the federal agency responsible for oversight of election spending — whose members frequently deadlock on matters along partisan lines — had not taken any enforcement action.
“The failure of the FEC to enforce our campaign finance laws has resulted in an explosion of shady campaign spending,” said Trevor Potter, the president of Campaign Legal Center Action CLC and a former FEC chairman. “The FEC had the chance to do the right thing by taking action against the NRA for this blatant spending coordination, but failed to do so.”
“This is a baseless effort engineered by anti-gun groups who want to silence the voices of our members,” NRA spokesperson Lars Dalseide told ABC News in a statement. “We welcome the FEC’s review so we can move on from this frivolous distraction.”
A spokesperson for the FEC declined to comment on the litigation.
FEC rules prohibit outside groups from making coordinated expenditures with campaigns, stipulating that candidate campaigns should not be “materially involved” in the production and placement of ads purchased by the super PAC arm or the politically active nonprofit arm of the NRA. Vendors that are shared by the NRA and federal campaigns are also prohibited from sharing information in support of each other.
“Over the last several years and across election cycles, the NRA has been brazenly flouting campaign finance law by illegally funneling money to candidates while claiming to remain independent,” said David Pucino, senior staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“It is clear that the NRA will continue to violate the law until someone stops them,” Pucino said. “Today’s decision ordering the FEC to take action is a resounding win to keep dark money out of our politics.”
(NEW YORK) — Taking a course of a particular antiviral pill over five days, shortly after COVID-19 diagnosis, may slash the risk of being hospitalized or dying of the virus by 50%, according to preliminary results announced by pharmaceutical companies Merck and Ridgeback.
If this pill — called molnupiravir — is ultimately authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, it would be the first antiviral pill people can take at home to reduce their risk of winding up in the hospital from the coronavirus. The medication would require a prescription and likely be for people with mild or moderate symptoms of COVID-19.
“It’s really exciting,” Dr. Carlos Del Rio, the executive associate dean and a global health expert at the Emory School of Medicine, said.
Right now, most COVID-19 patients are sent home and told to monitor their symptoms. Having an effective pill to offer them would “make a difference,” Del Rio added.
Merck Thursday morning announced the results of an ongoing Phase 3 study are so compelling that an independent monitoring board recommended, in consultation with the FDA, ending the trial early so the companies can swiftly seek authorization. The full set of data would become available to the public at that time.
Other companies, including Pfizer and Roche, are also working on antiviral pills that could become available soon. Merck plans to seek emergency authorization in the U.S. “as soon as possible” so that it can start mass distributing its antiviral pill.
The company has started producing the pills with the goal of having 10 million courses of the medication by the end of the year. The U.S. has already asked for 1.7 million doses, at a cost of over $1 billion.
Currently, doctors have some treatments to help those who are already sick with the virus, but those treatments are cumbersome, as they’re typically administered via intravenous infusion and usually reserved for patients who are hospitalized or have a high risk of becoming so.
“What we really need is the Tamiflu, if you will, for COVID-19,” Dr. Todd Ellerin, the director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health and an ABC News Med Unit contributor, said. “It’s possible that molnupiravir could be the agent.”
Molnupiravir is an antiviral drug, meaning it works by slowing the replication of the virus that causes COVID-19.
In an early analysis of 775 volunteers in a late-stage clinical trial, people who tested positive for COVID-19 within the last five days were split into two groups. The first group got the drug and the second got a placebo pill.
About 14% of people who got the placebo were hospitalized or died, compared to just over 7% of those who got the real drug.
“More tools and treatments are urgently needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become a leading cause of death and continues to profoundly affect patients, families, and societies and strain health care systems all around the world,” Robert M. Davis, the chief executive officer and president of Merck, said.
“I think this is exciting,” Ellerin said, “because we need an oral antiviral. We desperately need an oral antiviral that can be given early in the course.”
