Maja Oeri is a descendant of Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, who founded the Swiss pharma titan Roche in 1896. She owns about 5% of the company’s shares, having pulled her stake out of the family pool in 2011. Roche announced on March 19 2020 it was initiating phase three clinical trials of its arthritis drug tocilizumab as a treatment for COVID-19 patients in the U.S.; the company also developed a new serology test, which detects antibodies in people who have already had the disease, and plans to make it available in the U.S. and Europe by early May 2020.