COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 2 May

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

2. US allows emergency use of experimental drug for coronavirus

Regulators in the US have allowed the emergency use of the experimental drug remdesivir, which appears to help some coronavirus patients recover faster.

Gilead, the company which makes the antiviral drug, said it had helped improve outcomes for patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and provided data suggesting it worked better when given earlier in the course of infection.

During a meeting with President Donald Trump, Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O’Day said the company was donating 1.5 million vials of the drug to help patients.

Remdesivir is the first drug shown to help fight Covid-19. In a study of 1,063 patients, preliminary results showed that the drug shortened the time to recovery by 31%, or about four days on average, for hospitalized patients.

Those given the drug were able to leave the hospital in 11 days on average versus 15 days for a comparison group.

3. How a new WHO partnership could protect against future pandemics

A new partnership was announced Friday with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to provide grants and financial support to scale up the funding needed to strengthen supply chains while investing in infrastructure and global health preparedness. The key focus areas include:

4. Here are the biggest economic challenges we face over the next 10 years

A selection of "ominous and risky trends" could lead to major challenges in the next decade writes economist Nouriel Roubini in an article for Project Syndicate. Some of these trends include: a massive increase in fiscal deficits, the combination of unfunded healthcare programs and aging populations, and the growing risk of deflation.

These risks and others loomed large before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has brought them to the forefront. Should we survive these factors, Roubini writes, the coming 2030s could reward us with a combination of technology and leadership that "may be able to reduce, resolve, or minimize many of these problems, giving rise to a more inclusive, cooperative, and stable international order."

5. Could vaccine hesitancy limit the impact of a future COVID-19 vaccine?

Sam Leakey, a Programme Specialist in Science and Society for the World Economic Forum answered a number of questions on vaccines recently for Agenda. Among them? How vaccine hesitancy could impact efforts to eradicate COVID-19.

According to Leakey, the challenge with vaccines is that they’re so successful in preventing diseases that the reason they’re necessary becomes less apparent.

Hesitancy, as well as deprioritization, is more likely down the line, after the disease has been controlled. "If in two, three or more years’ time, we’ve had a successful vaccine and we’re not seeing new COVID-19 infections, people may increasingly choose not to be vaccinated".

6. COVID-19 is a crisis of nature as well as health. Here's why

Environmental degradation has weakened animal habitats, creating the unnatural conditions that allowed for the novel coronavirus to jump from animals to humans, writes Andrew Mitchell, Founder and Senior Adviser for non-profit Global Canopy in Agenda this week. Several laboratories have investigated the coronavirus’ genome and the human version of the coronavirus suggests an intermediary such as the pangolin allowed the virus to jump from bats to humans, as the pangolin version of the virus has an ability to bind onto human cells and pangolins were sold in illegal markets.

Writes Mitchell: "Only an unnatural cocktail that brings all of these wildlife elements together alongside humans can turbocharge the conditions needed for multiple mutations to take place, resulting in one which eventually outfoxes our immunity - and so the virus explodes".