Amazon's COVID-19 response includes funding clinical trials, shipping diagnostic tests and helping to build databases for clinicians to access information on COVID-19 patients' responses to different treatments, STAT reported.
The details:
- Amazon has donated $2.5 million in grants for a clinical trial at Columbia University in New York City. Approved by the FDA last month, the study seeks to determine whether blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients can help prevent infections in high-risk people or treat severe cases of COVID-19, STAT reported.
- Amazon Web Services built an online registry for potential blood plasma donors in a collaboration with Michigan State University in East Lansing. The site allows potential blood plasma donors to be contacted by local researchers. So far it has enrolled 10,000 potential donors, according to STAT. The site also allows clinicians to record notes on how patients are responding to blood plasma treatment.
- Amazon is providing an undisclosed amount of funding to a study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, STAT reported. The study is collecting data on COVID-19's infection rate, how long infected people remain contagious and whether they develop immunity to the virus.
- Amazon is shipping at-home COVID-19 tests to symptomatic essential workers in the U.K., including healthcare workers, teachers, delivery drivers and supermarket workers. Amazon Care also is delivering and picking up self-swab kits in Washington state as part of a research effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to STAT.