AstraZeneca starts UK coronavirus drug trial

LONDON - Pharma giant AstraZeneca said Tuesday it had begun a clinical trial of a drug designed to both prevent infection and treat people with COVID-19, with the first volunteers receiving doses.

The drug, known as AZD7442, is a combination of two antibodies and is being tested on 48 healthy people aged between 18 and 55, the company said.

"This trial is an important milestone in the development of our monoclonal antibody combination to prevent or treat COVID-19," said Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca.

The company said the trial would help evaluate the safety of the drug and be used both to prevent the disease and to stop it from progressing in patients already infected. 

Results from the trial are expected by the end of this year.

This latest trial involving AstraZeneca, which has its global headquarters in Cambridge, eastern England, comes in addition to its partnership with the University of Oxford on the development of a separate coronavirus vaccine, which is said to have produced encouraging results.

News of the latest trial prompted shares in AstraZeneca to rise in early trading on Tuesday.

Agence France-Presse

Fujifilm ties up with Indian firm on potential COVID-19 drug Avigan

TOKYO - Fujifilm Corp. said Wednesday it had signed an agreement with an Indian pharmaceutical company and a company that provides global medical supplies, granting them exclusive rights to develop, produce and sell its potential COVID-19 treatment drug Avigan overseas.

Under the tripartite agreement with India's Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. and Dubai-based Global Response Aid signed Tuesday, Fujifilm will receive a lump-sum license fee and royalties on sales of Avigan, also known as favipiravir, currently undergoing clinical testing as a possible coronavirus treatment drug in Japan.

Fujifilm Toyama Chemical Co., the Fujifilm subsidiary that developed Avigan, will provide the 2 companies with data accumulated so far on preclinical and clinical studies of the drug.

They "will make use of this data to swiftly implement clinical studies, targeting COVID-19 patients in India, the Middle East and other regions where infections have been spreading," Fujifilm said in a statement.

The license agreement excludes rights to sell Avigan in China and Russia, it said.

Fujifilm also said it would grant Dr. Reddy's the right to use Avigan production patents so that the Indian drugmaker can supply GRA's global sales network swiftly and stably.

Avigan has yet to be approved by the Japanese government for COVID-19 treatment, with clinical testing delayed due to insufficient enrollment.

The Japanese government gave up on its target for approval of the drug in May after an interim analysis of an Avigan clinical study, being conducted by a team led by Fujita Health University, did not show clear efficacy in treating the disease.

As Avigan can inhibit the replication of the novel coronavirus in cells, experts say it may bring about improvements in infected patients.

Avigan, which has been stockpiled by the government as an anti-flu drug, cannot be administered to expectant mothers or women who are likely to become pregnant as it may cause birth defects.

Kyodo News

Russia rolls out first approved COVID-19 drug as infections pass 500,000

MOSCOW - Russia on Thursday rolled out a drug approved to treat patients suffering from the novel coronavirus, its state financial backer said, as the number of infections there surpassed half a million.

The first deliveries of the new antiviral drug, registered under the name Avifavir, were made to some hospitals and clinics across the country, Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund said in a press release. 

RDIF has funded trials and has a 50 percent share in the drug's manufacturer ChemRar.

The health ministry gave its approval for the drug's use under a special accelerated process while clinical trials, held over a shorter period and with fewer people than many other countries, were still underway.

There is currently no vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and human trials of several existing antiviral drugs have yet to show efficacy.

RDIF chief Kirill Dmitriev last week told Reuters the plan was for ChemRar to manufacture enough of the drug to treat around 60,000 people a month.

Dmitriev on Thursday said more than 10 countries had made requests for Avifavir supplies.

Negotiations were underway to supply the drug to almost all of Russia's regions, with 7 of its more than 80 regions receiving Thursday's initial deliveries, Dmitriev added.

With 502,436 cases, Russia has the third highest number of infections in the world after Brazil and the United States, but has a relatively low official death toll of 6,532 - something that has been the focus of debate.

The Moscow health department on Wednesday raised its death toll for the month of May, citing changes in the way it determines the cause of death for patients suffering from other health problems.

-reuters-

A new entry in the race for a coronavirus vaccine: Hope

In a medical research project nearly unrivaled in its ambition and scope, volunteers worldwide are rolling up their sleeves to receive experimental vaccines against the coronavirus — only months after the virus was identified.

Companies like Inovio and Pfizer have begun early tests of candidates in people to determine whether their vaccines are safe. Researchers at the University of Oxford in England are testing vaccines in human subjects, too, and say they could have one ready for emergency use as soon as September.

Moderna on Monday announced encouraging results of a safety trial of its vaccine in eight volunteers. There were no published data, but the news alone kindled hopes and sent the company’s stock soaring.

Animal studies have raised expectations, too. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston on Wednesday published research showing that a prototype vaccine effectively protected monkeys from infection with the virus.

The findings will pave the way to the development of a human vaccine, said the investigators. They have already partnered with Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

In labs around the world, there is now cautious optimism that a coronavirus vaccine, and perhaps more than one, will be ready sometime next year.

Scientists are exploring not just one approach to creating the vaccine but at least four. So great is the urgency that they are combining trial phases and shortening a process that usually takes years, sometimes more than a decade.

The coronavirus itself has turned out to be clumsy prey, a stable pathogen unlikely to mutate significantly and dodge a vaccine.

“It’s an easier target, which is terrific news,” said Michael Farzan, a virologist at Scripps Research in Jupiter, Florida.

An effective vaccine will be crucial to ending the pandemic, which has sickened at least 4.7 million worldwide and killed at least 324,000. Widespread immunity would reopen the door to lives without social distancing and face masks.

“What people don’t realize is that normally vaccine development takes many years, sometimes decades,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess who led the monkey trials. “And so trying to compress the whole vaccine process into 12 to 18 months is really unheard-of. If that happens, it will be the fastest vaccine development program ever in history.”

More than 100 research teams around the world are taking aim at the virus from multiple angles.

Moderna’s vaccine is based on a relatively new mRNA technology that delivers bits of the virus’s genes into human cells. The goal is for cells to begin making a viral protein that the immune system recognizes as foreign. The body builds defenses against that protein, priming itself to attack if the actual coronavirus invades.

Some vaccine-makers, including Inovio, are developing vaccines based on DNA variations of this approach.

But the technology used by both companies has never produced a vaccine approved for clinical use, let alone one that can be made in industrial quantities. Moderna was criticized for making rosy predictions, based on a handful of patients, without providing any scientific data.

Other research teams have turned to more traditional strategies.

Some scientists are using harmless viruses to deliver coronavirus genes into cells, forcing them to produce proteins that may teach the immune system to watch out for the coronavirus. CanSino Biologics, a company in China, has begun human testing of a coronavirus vaccine that relies on this approach, as has the University of Oxford team.

Other traditional approaches rely on fragments of a coronavirus protein to make a vaccine, while some use killed, or inactivated, versions of the whole coronavirus. In China, such vaccines have already entered human trials.

Florian Krammer, a virologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, predicted that at least 20 additional vaccine candidates will make their way into clinical trials in the weeks to come.

“I’m not worried at all about it,” he said of the prospects for a new vaccine.

Many of these vaccines will stumble as the trials progress. As more people are inoculated, some candidates will fail to protect against the virus, and side effects will become more apparent.

But from what scientists are learning about the coronavirus, it ought to be a relatively easy target.

The coronavirus sports tempting targets on its surface, unique “spike” proteins the pathogen needs to enter human cells. The immune system readily learns to recognize these proteins, it appears, and to attack them, killing the virus.

Viruses can challenge vaccine-makers by mutating rapidly, changing shape so that antibodies that work on one viral strain fail on another. Thankfully, the new coronavirus seems to be a slow mutator, and a vaccine that proves effective in trials should work anywhere in the world.

When work on a coronavirus vaccine started, some researchers worried that antibodies actually might worsen COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. But in early studies, no serious risks have emerged.

“That doesn’t mean that there won’t be, but so far there hasn’t been any indication, so I’m cautiously optimistic on that point,” said Dr. Alyson Kelvin, a researcher at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology and Dalhousie University.

Scaling Up

Ensuring that vaccines are safe and effective demands large trials that require careful planning and execution. If successful vaccines emerge from those trials, someone’s going to have to make an awful lot of them.

Almost everyone on the planet is vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Each person may need two doses of a new vaccine to receive protective immunity. That’s 16 billion doses.

“When companies promise of delivering a vaccine in a year or less, I am not sure what stage they are talking about,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale University. “I doubt they are talking about global distributions in billions of doses.”

Manufacturing vaccines is profoundly more complex than manufacturing, say, shoes or bicycles. Vaccines typically require large vats in which their ingredients are grown, and these have to be maintained in sterile conditions. Also, no factories have ever churned out millions of doses of approved vaccines made with the cutting-edge technology being tested by companies like Inovio and Moderna.

Facilities have sprung up in recent years to make viral-vector vaccines, including a Johnson & Johnson plant in the Netherlands. But meeting pandemic demand would be an enormous challenge. Manufacturers have the most experience mass-producing inactivated vaccines, made with killed viruses, so this type may be the easiest to produce in large quantities.

But there cannot be just one vaccine. If that were to happen, the company that made it would have no chance of meeting the world’s demand.

As part of a public-private partnership the White House calls Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration has promised to design a kind of parallel manufacturing track to run alongside the clinical trials, building up capacity well before trials are concluded, in hopes that one or more vaccines could be distributed immediately upon approval.

President Donald Trump said Friday that the goal of the project was to distribute a vaccine “prior to the end of the year.” To do that, Trump is relying on the Defense Department to manage the manufacturing logistics related to vaccine development.

But in an interview Thursday, Gen. Gustave Perna, who will manage the manufacturing logistics, said discussions about the equipment and facilities needed for production were just beginning.

He described his work as a “math problem”: how to get 300 million doses of a vaccine that doesn’t yet exist to Americans — by January.

Finding the supplies and planning their distribution would occur at the same time, he said. “I need to have syringes,” Perna said. “I need to have wipes, right? I need to have Band-Aids. I need to have the vaccine.”

A coronavirus vaccine doesn’t yet exist, but already there are questions about who will be able to afford it.

At the World Health Assembly meeting this week, a proposal from the European Union was adopted recommending a voluntary patent pool, which would put pressure on companies to give up their monopolies on vaccines they’ve developed.

Oxfam, an international charity, has published an open letter from 140 world leaders and experts calling for a “people’s vaccine,” which would be “made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge.”

“These vaccines have to be a public good,” said Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand, who signed the letter. “We’re not safe till everyone is safe.”

-Carl Zimmer, Knvul Sheikh, and Noah Weiland, The New York Times-

COVID-19 patients respond positively to remdesivir in major US trial

WASHINGTON - Gilead Science's remdesivir, one of the most highly anticipated drugs being tested against the new coronavirus, showed positive results in a large-scale US government trial, the company said Wednesday.

"We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint and that NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) will provide detailed information at an upcoming briefing," the company said.

Though it is difficult to precisely quantify the finding in the absence of results, it represents the first time any drug has been shown to improve outcomes against the COVID-19 illness, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives globally and brought the world economy to a grinding halt.

There have been mixed results for the intravenous antiviral in recent weeks. A summary of results posted on the website of the World Health Organization showed it failed in a smaller Chinese trial, but days before that, Stat reported it had shown significant efficacy at a Chicago hospital.

However, this trial, begun in late February and overseen by the US government, is the largest and technically most robust. 

According to a data sheet, its estimated enrollment was 800 patients, a portion of whom received the drug while the rest received a placebo. 

Neither the patients nor their physicians were aware of which group they belonged to, in order to eliminate unconscious bias.

It is a Phase 3 trial, the final stage before any medication can receive regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Remdesivir, which previously failed in trials against Ebola, belongs to a class of drugs that act on the virus directly -- as opposed to controlling the abnormal and often lethal autoimmune response it causes.

It mimics 1 of the 4 building blocks of RNA and DNA and gets absorbed into the virus's genome, which in turn stops the pathogen from replicating.

The antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are also being widely used against COVID-19 on a so-called "compassionate basis" pending results from large trials, with early studies decidedly mixed.

Other therapies that are being studied include collecting antibodies from COVID-19 survivors and injecting them in patients, or harvesting antibodies from genetically-engineered mice that were deliberately infected.

Agence France-Presse

J&J must pay $8B in case over male breast growth side effect: jury

NEW YORK -- Johnson & Johnson must pay $8 billion in punitive damages to a man who previously won $680,000 over his claims that it failed to warn that young men using its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could grow breasts, a Philadelphia jury said on Tuesday.

The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury's verdict in favor of Nicholas Murray came in the first case in which a Pennsylvania jury had been able to consider awarding punitive damages in one of thousands of Risperdal cases pending in the state.

"This jury, as have other juries in other litigations, once again imposed punitive damages on a corporation that valued profits over safety and profits over patients," Murray's lawyers, Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, said in a joint statement. "Johnson & Johnson and (subsidiary) Janssen chose billions over children."

J&J said the award was "grossly disproportionate with the initial compensatory award in this case, and the company is confident it will be overturned." It added that the jury in the case had not been allowed to hear evidence of Risperdal's benefits.

Professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law said he expects the punitive damages to be lowered on appeal, citing a US Supreme Court decision which found that "few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process."

Tobias said the verdict was about sending a message.

"A jury, if it's outrageous enough conduct, will award a big number and let the lawyers and judges work it out," he said.

Tobias added that the verdict could be a sign that J&J will face more large damages awards in other Risperdal cases.

"The kind of evidence in this trial may persuade another jury or judge to do something similar," he said.

Murray, like other male plaintiffs in the mass tort litigation over Risperdal, alleges that he developed breasts after being prescribed the medicine when he was a minor. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the drug in late 1993 for treating schizophrenia and episodes of bipolar mania in adults.

Plaintiffs claim that J&J failed to warn of the risk of gynecomastia, the development of enlarged breasts in males, associated with Risperdal, which they say the company marketed for unapproved uses with children.

In his lawsuit, Murray, now 26, alleged that he developed breasts after his doctors began prescribing him Risperdal off-label in 2003 after a psychologist diagnosed him with autism spectrum disorder. Doctors are allowed to prescribe medicines as they see fit, while companies are only allowed to promote their drugs for approved uses.

A jury in 2015 awarded Murray $1.75 million after finding J&J was negligent in failing to warn of the risk of gynecomastia. A state appeals court upheld the verdict in February 2018 but reduced it to $680,000.

Plaintiffs in the mass tort litigation had been barred from seeking punitive damages since 2014, when a state court judge ruled that the law of New Jersey, which prohibits punitive damages and is J&J's home state, should be applied globally to the cases.

But a Pennsylvania Superior Court ruling in 2018 cleared the way for punitive damages awards, holding that the law of each plaintiff's state should instead apply. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

California launches legal sale of cannabis for recreational use

LOS ANGELES - California will launch the world's largest regulated commercial market for recreational marijuana on Monday, as dozens of newly licensed stores catering to adults who enjoy the drug for its psychoactive effects open for business up and down the state.

It becomes the sixth U.S. state, and by far the most populous, venturing beyond legalized medical marijuana to permit the sale of cannabis products of all types to customers at least 21 years old.

Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Nevada were the first to introduce recreational pot sales on a state-regulated, licensed and taxed basis. Massachusetts and Maine are on track to follow suit later this year.

With California and its 39.5 million residents officially joining the pack, more than one-in-five Americans now live in states where recreational marijuana is legal for purchase, even though cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under U.S. law.

The marijuana market in California alone, which boasts the world's sixth-largest economy, is valued by most experts at several billion dollars annually and is expected to generate at least a $1 billion a year in tax revenue.

"Adding California to the regulated market for cannabis is a really big deal," said Heather Azzi, a senior attorney for the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group working to liberalize marijuana laws.

Uruguay became the first and only country to legalize recreational marijuana sales nationally, permitted through its pharmacies starting in July 2017, but is far smaller in comparison, with a population of just 3.4 million.

Still, most California jurisdictions are sitting out the highly anticipated New Year's Day inauguration of recreational cannabis sales.

Many, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, will not be ready for days or weeks because of additional red tape required by city and county governments before would-be retailers can obtain their state licenses.

But business will almost certainly be brisk at newly permitted shops ready on Day One. They number about four-dozen outlets across California, according to an authoritative guide to the cannabis market, GreenState, published by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Stores authorized to carry recreational weed were set to go on New Year's Day in San Diego, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Berkeley, Eureka and Desert Hot Springs, among other locales. Hundreds more are expected to open throughout the state as the year progresses.

Many previously operated strictly as medical cannabis dispensaries under a patchwork of local regulations, and will now be licensed by the state for recreational merchandise as well.

Among the very first will be the Oakland-based Harborside dispensary, which has long ranked as the largest U.S. medical marijuana outlet. It planned to opens its doors at 6 a.m. local time on Monday.

Customers in the recreational sector - which state regulators prefer to call the "adult use" market - are only permitted to buy an ounce (28 grams) of raw cannabis or its equivalent at a time.

Medical patients can buy unlimited quantities, but must present a doctor's note and have purchased a medical ID card.

The stage for Monday's grand opening was set when voters passed a ballot measure in November 2016, Proposition 64, immediately legalizing personal possession and use of recreational pot by adults 21 and over.

But it has taken California lawmakers and bureaucrats over a year to devise a licensing, regulatory and tax structure for all phases of the commercial distribution chain.

California in 1996 became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, and more than 30 states have since done likewise. (Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Kim Coghill)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Opioid maker fined $35M over shipments that fed addiction crisis

WASHINGTON - Drug manufacturer Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals was fined $35 million Tuesday for supplying and not reporting suspicious massive orders of its highly addictive oxycodone, helping to fuel the US addiction crisis.

The Justice Department said the company agreed to pay the amount to settle allegations that it did not meet obligations to report to the Drug Enforcement Administration suspect orders from pharmacies in Florida and elsewhere.

Mallinckrodt, which manufactures drugs in the United States but keeps its corporate headquarters in London, has been under investigation since 2011 by the DEA for shipping huge amounts of oxycodone via distributors to small communities that could not possibly generate demand.

The barely controlled pumping of hundreds of millions of doses of opioids into US communities by major drug manufacturers during the past decade is blamed for a sharp surge in addiction and overdose deaths which totaled an estimated 60,000 last year.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech Tuesday that the United States "has paid an increasingly high price for drug abuse. We have paid for it in broken relationships and broken lives and death rates the likes of which we have never seen before."

"Mallinckrodt's actions and omissions formed a link in the chain of supply that resulted in millions of oxycodone pills being sold on the street," he said in a separate statement on the settlement.

The $35 million settlement was equivalent to 7.2 percent of the company's 2016 net profits.

In a statement, the company said it disagreed with the government's allegations and denied it violated any laws.

"We are proud of the fact that Mallinckrodt has long been an industry leader in actively combating the serious issue of prescription drug abuse," said the company's general counsel Michael-Bryant Hicks.

pmh/mdl

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Pfizer nears deal to acquire Medivation for close to $14-B -sources

NEW YORK - Pfizer Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire U.S. cancer drug company Medivation Inc. for close to $14 billion, as it seeks to boost its oncology portfolio, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

Pfizer has agreed to pay a little more than $80 per share for Medivation, one of the people said, a substantial premium to the $52.50 offer for Medivation that France's Sanofi made in April, which eventually resulted in the company putting itself up for sale.

Medivation shares ended trading in New York on Friday at $67.16.

Reuters reported earlier this week that Pfizer, Sanofi, Merck & Co Inc., Celgene Corp. and Gilead Sciences Inc. had submitted expressions of interest to acquire Medivation.

The strong acquisition interest in the San Francisco-based company illustrates how demand for new cancer treatments, which can possibly add years to patients' lives, could spell billions of dollars in revenue to the companies that own them.

Pfizer has so far prevailed in the auction for Medivation and could announce a deal as early as Monday, although the negotiations still could fall apart at the last minute, the people said. The deal is expected to be paid for by Pfizer in its entirety, or at least mostly, with cash, one of the people said.

The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Pfizer and Medivation declined to comment. The Financial Times first reported on Pfizer nearing a deal for Medivation on Sunday.

Pfizer, whose oncology offerings include breast cancer drug Ibrance and several other promising immuno-oncology products, is now set to get access to Medivation's successful prostate cancer drug Xtandi, as well as Talazoparib, another breast cancer treatment under development by Medivation.

Medivation earlier this year rejected two acquisition offers from Sanofi, the latest for $58 per share in cash and $3 per share in the form of a contingent value right relating to the sales performance of Talazoparib.

However, Medivation agreed in July to share confidential information with potential buyers after Sanofi agreed to drop a campaign to oust Medivation's board of directors.

In its second-quarter earnings call earlier this month, Medivation reported continued double-digit year-over-year growth for Xtandi, affirming the company’s expectations of more than 50 percent revenue growth for the year.

Medivation also cited positive late-stage data for Talazoparib, a drug the company believes will account for a significant part of its long-term value.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Why Kris allowed son Joshua to get Botox

MANILA -- Although Botox is usually given to older patients who want to get rid of signs of aging like wrinkles, actress-host Kris Aquino admitted on Wednesday that her eldest son Joshua got injections of the drug.

Botox is a drug commonly used cosmetically to remove wrinkles by temporarily paralyzing facial muscles.

But in the case of Aquino's 19-year-old son with veteran actor Philip Salvador, the Botox injections were for his armpits as this reportedly helps control excessive sweating.



"Oh my God, nagwo-work talaga 'yung Botox sa kili-kili kay Josh. It really stopped," Aquino told her guest co-hosts KC Concepcion and Karla Estrada on her morning show "Kris TV "aired on Wednesday.

According to the actress-host, it was her "The Buzz" co-host Toni Gonzaga who told her about this little-known effect of Botox.

"And it really helped Josh dati ang dami niyang sweat stains," Aquino said. "Now his kili-kilio is not pawis-pawis anymore."

According to celebrity dermatologist Dr. Vicki Belo, injecting Botox in the armpits can stop sweating and also whiten the area.




Botox of the armpit is a short procedure and only uses cream anesthesia for zero pain. The procedure takes one hour, while the effects of the procedure last for six months.

"The Botox stops the sweat glands from secreting the sweat by paralyzing temporarily the muscles around the sweat glands that causes the sweat glands to be squeeze and release the perspiration," Belo explained.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Texas Ebola patient gets experimental drug

WASHINGTON - A Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in Texas was given an experimental drug for the first time, officials said Monday as the White House mulled tougher airport screening at home and abroad.

Thomas Eric Duncan was given the investigational medication, brincidofovir, on Saturday, the day his condition worsened from serious to critical, said Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

The medication is made by the North Carolina-based pharmaceutical company Chimerix, and until now had never been tried in humans with Ebola, the company said.

However, it has been tested in about 1,000 people against adenovirus and cytomegalovirus.

The drug "works by keeping viruses from creating additional copies of themselves," Chimerix said.

Duncan is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, and he is believed to have become infected while in Liberia.

West Africa is currently battling the largest outbreak of Ebola in history, with more than 3,400 dead from the hemorrhagic virus since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama was briefed by senior health and security advisors about the situation in Texas and US preparedness against Ebola.

Obama said the chances of a US Ebola outbreak were "extraordinarily low" but vowed to press world leaders to step up the global fight against the deadly epidemic in West Africa.

"We have not seen other countries step up as aggressively as they need to," Obama said.

"I'm going to be putting a lot of pressure on my fellow heads of state and government around the world to make sure that they are doing everything that they can to join us in this effort."

He said the United States is considering tougher airport screening to ward against the spread of cases by airline travelers.

"We're also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States," Obama told reporters.

In Nebraska, a US photojournalist who tested positive for Ebola in Liberia arrived at a hospital and was able to walk off the airplane that carried him.

"We are really happy that his symptoms are not extreme yet," Ashoka Mukpo's mother, Diana, told reporters, adding that he was feverish and nauseous.

He is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, the same facility that treated American missionary doctor Rick Sacra last month.

Sacra also came down with Ebola in Liberia and was treated with the Canadian firm Tekmira's Ebola drug, TKM-Ebola, as well as serum from another doctor, Kent Brantly, who had Ebola and recovered.

Brantly was treated with a drug called ZMapp, which is hard to make, and there are no doses left.

There is no market-approved drug for treating Ebola yet, and no vaccine to prevent it.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com