“Our window of opportunity is closing. If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities,” Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, said today as he testified at a House subcommittee hearing on the U.S. response to COVID-19.

Irvine, Calif.-based startup Ocutrx Vision Technologies LLC unveiled new technology that it said helps surgeons better visualize the operative field during surgical procedures. The OR-Bot Surgery Visualization Theatre combines augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and both human- and robot-controlled arms to facilitate exacting medical procedures without the need for physicians to look away from the patient.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has opened a priority track for patents related to the COVID-19 pandemic, another signal of federal government intent on overcoming this new plague. However, Scott Marty, a partner with the Atlanta office of Ballard Spahr LLP, told BioWorld that while the program offers some distinct advantages for pandemic-driven patents, inventors should have their filings in good form before entry because any delays incurred by a less-than-airtight application could lead the PTO to boot the application out of this program.

How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting cancer treatment plans? Oncologists are weighing switching treatment plans, and they have many questions. That’s where Nanthealth Inc., of El Segundo, Calif., is looking to help.

The U.S. does not have a universal health care system, which means that it fails to provide a consistent level of minimum care across its population. That means that basic and preventative care often falls through the cracks, even as the U.S. continues to excel at medical innovation and offer the most highly regarded health care in the world to those who can afford it.

Innovation is being rewarded under Medicare’s proposed fiscal 2021 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) that was unveiled Monday. For starters, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing a new Medicare-severity-diagnosis related group (MS-DRG) specifically for CAR T therapies.

Quanterix Corp., of Billerica, Mass., reported that researchers have developed a COVID-19 antibody test with 1,000 times the sensitivity of current tests using its Simoa bead-based immunoassay platform.

Intersect ENT Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., saw its revenue for the first quarter of 2020 fall to $19.8 million. That figure compares with $26.7 million for the same period last year, with the COVID-19 pandemic having a significant impact on procedures.

The May 12 Senate hearing regarding the COVID-19 pandemic included the usual conversations about contact tracing, but Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that one of the vaccines currently in trial in the U.S. will work, but that it is unlikely a vaccine will be ready by September 2020. In contrast, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said testing capacity may reach 50 million tests per month by that time, thanks in part to the fact that antigen testing is now part of the FDA’s emergency use authorization mechanism.

Having a COVID-19 therapy approved through an emergency use authorization (EUA) is not the same as having access to it, even if it’s free. Accounting for one-third of the nearly 4 million COVID-19 cases confirmed globally as of Monday and 28.5% of the 278,957 deaths, the U.S. is getting 40% of the 1.5 million vials of remdesivir Gilead Sciences Inc. is donating worldwide.