Small trial (no control arm, only 25 patients) of treatment with transfusion oof convalescent plasma (plasma from recovered Covid patients). Patients were severely ill, over half on ventilators and rest on oxygen. 18 were discharged, one died, 4 remained hospitalized with severe disease, by end of three week trial. (I must have missed a couple in counting.)
Since there’s no control arm, hard to say if these patients did better than you’d expect with no treatment. But 18/25 recovered seems promising.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.08.20095471v1
Takeda and others are working on convalescent plasma programs.
On the vaccine front, four programs are in the lead, in terms of clinical trial progress. Moderna has finished a phase 1 (no data yet) and will start ph 2 shortly. CanSio [EDIT Sinovac] (I think that’s name, a Chinese biotech) is starting a phase 1/2 in Canada soon (maybe has done a ph 1 in China, not sure). Oxford University/Astrazeneca are either in or soon starting ph 1. Pfizer/BionTech ditto. These programs could in theory have vaccines approved and in production by year end - if the vaccines work, big if. There are some 60 more vaccine programs behind them.
Edit: Five - Novavax has a vaccine candidate entering ph 1 shortly with support from CEPI (foundation). Of course, this stock went from $256 to $2 in 3 years on two failed RSV vaccine trials.
Because the manufacturing supply will be far short of demand initially and probably for all of 2020/2021, and because even a so-so vaccine with limited data will be approved, this is not the usual winner take all market. The first several vaccines to be approved will probably all be able to sell as much as they can produce for the first couple years. Sales will probably be geographically constrained at first - Oxford/Astra’s vaccine has been promised exclusively to the UK at first, CanSio (?) will presumably supply only China at first, etc.
Price is a big question mark, the pharma that tries to gouge on price will be crucified, but even at $100/dose (no idea if that’s realistic), if the market is a few billion people, that’s a lot of revenue. If the vaccines end up being only temporary in effect, that’s even “better” from a commercial standpoint.