Trump calls the treatment a blessing, saying it helped him recover from Covid-19. According to doctors, this claim cannot be substantiated. The president still has had other medications and therefore it is not possible to say with certainty whether REGN-COV2 was the deciding factor.
Promising
This does not alter the fact that the treatment is said to be promising by specialists. The drug has now been tested on about 275 people, writes The Guardian. That is far too little to get it approved for widespread use, doctors in the US warn. Still, that’s what Trump is betting on.
The president previously touted drugs that the drug watchdog FDA has disputed are effective against Covid-19. In the run-up to the presidential election on November 3, he seems eager to accelerate the release of drugs or even a vaccine against the disease.
Operation Warp Speed
In a radio interview, the president now emphasized that he wants to convince the FDA to give the antibody drug the green light as soon as possible. This permission must apply to both Regeneron and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co.
The US government struck a deal with Regeneron in July. In the context of Operation Warp Speed the company received $ 450 million for 300,000 doses of the experimental drug. It is still unclear what the price of the drug will be after the free phase in the US.
The Regeneron share has been on the rise since the start of the corona crisis. According to the Financial Times, the price has been since January increased by about 60 percent. When it became clear that the president was using it and then praising it, the stock skyrocketed.
Shares sold
It is not clear when Trump bought shares in the company. Government documents show that he sold the shares between June 2016 and June 2017. That gave him a profit of between $ 50,000 and $ 100,000.
Analysts tell the Financial Times that Regeneron’s scientific expertise has been key to the government deal, as it managed to develop a potential drug within months.
The Netherlands
Incidentally, the agent REGN-COV2 also has a link with the Netherlands. The company reports that the cocktail of antibodies are created in part from kidney cells an abortion in the Netherlands in the 1970s. This is striking because the Trump administration is against abortion.
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