In our first podcast, we present some of the new technologies behind potential Covid-19 therapies to complement the solutions already outlined in our Keynote series. We see them as, at best, a bridging solution while we wait for a future vaccine to become globally available.

Unfortunately, it is still too soon for us to be making individual recommendations on vaccination. This is mainly because we do not recommend that our clients volunteer to be among the first 1-2 million recipients of any particular vaccine, as experience has shown that this is the stage at which adjustments to dosage take place and any unwanted side-effects generally manifest themselves.

Medical associations such as DEGAM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Allgemeinmedizin und Familienmedizin) in Germany have been adopting the same recommendations we have been making to our Premium clients since May as part of our Covid-19 Immunization Program and have developed their own individual measures based on this strategy.

The wider interests of society in combating the pandemic and the interests of the individual have not yet converged.

What is best for society in its efforts to control the pandemic may not necessarily coincide with what is best for the individual.

...antibody medication from Eli Lilly.

Numerous active substances have so far been tried out against the virus. Once they have been officially approved for use, we look at their pharmacogenetic profile to decide whether they offer individual efficacy for our Salvagene Premium clients over and above the standard range of efficacy that is determined in the course of the official approval process. It has to be said that, apart from the cortisone preparation dexamethasone, there is no really convincing treatment for patients suffering from the effects of Covid-19. As we have been reporting for some months now, our best hopes lie in so-called “monoclonal antibodies”.

With the announcement by the FDA last Friday evening (11th December) that they had given emergency approval for the vaccine developed by the Mainz-based BioNTech company and manufactured by its commercial partner Pfizer, we are now able to make initial and preliminary recommendations to Dr Robert Hess Premium clients in the USA.

The first Covid-19 vaccine in the Western world, which was developed by BioNTech in Germany, was granted emergency approval in the UK, USA, Canada and other countries several days ago. It is therefore no surprise that political pressure has been growing in Europe in response to the obvious question why a vaccine developed in Germany is not also available in the member states of the European Union.

We at Salvagene have been specializing in the field of genetics for more than 20 years, and it now constitutes our core competence. We are therefore looking at the coronavirus pandemic and the Covid-19 disease from a genetics-based perspective, and we regard it as a matter of utmost priority.

Genetic information that instructs human cells to produce a fragment of the virus.

Despite the fact that research in the field of mRNA has been going on for 30 years now, not a single medication based on this technology had succeeded in getting past the approval stage until the EMA authorized its use a few days ago.