COVID-19

With COVID-19 transmission continuing to accelerate, President Biden called for state and local governments to offer financial incentives for vaccination. Speaking at a White House briefing dedicated to the novel coronavirus, Biden offered to draw such funding from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to die,”…

FDA has agreed to extend the shelf life of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 to six months. The previous shelf life was four and a half months. The regulatory agency based its decision on data from ongoing studies involving vaccine doses stored at the previously indicated storage temperature of 2–8°C (35.6–46.4°F). There is currently a…

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) posted second-quarter results today that beat the consensus forecast. In addition, thanks to solid vaccine sales, the company boosted its outlook for the remainder of the year. The company expects annual sales of the two-dose vaccine it jointly developed with BioNTech to hit $3.5 billion. The New York City–based company reported profits…

The Department of Justice recently decided that federal law doesn’t block public or private organizations from requiring COVID-19 vaccines. Following that decision, a growing number of organizations are beginning to mandate COVID-19 vaccines. The Department of Veteran Affairs became the first federal agency to do so. That decision will require full vaccination for some 115,000…

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX) announced today that the U.S. government has purchased another 200 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine. Media outlets including CNN and the Financial Times cited a Biden administration official saying the additional doses are needed to vaccinate children under 12, pending FDA authorization, plus the potential need for additional booster…

The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 resulted from a laboratory accident has gained a degree of plausibility among several world leaders. But China has rejected calls for further investigation into the matter, saying such allegations disregard “common sense,” as Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), said at a press briefing. White House press secretary…

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX) today announced an agreement with Biovac to manufacture the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine for distribution in Africa. Cape Town, South Africa-based Biovac will perform manufacturing and distribution activities within Pfizer and BioNTech’s global COVID-19 vaccine supply chain and manufacturing network to aid in distribution within the African Union, according to a…

Israel is following a similar path to the U.K. in its plans to administer a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a subset of patients.  U.K. officials recently announced their initiative to provide a booster to high-risk patients, but those plans are preliminary.  Both Israel and U.K. have concluded that fully vaccinated individuals are unlikely…

An analysis published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases found a 56% reduced risk of mortality for COVID-19 patients taking the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin compared to standard of care or another therapy. The study pulled data from 24 randomized trials involving 3,328 patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. The study also found that ivermectin was “associated…

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a $650 billion allocation for COVID-19 vaccines. IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva issued a statement today confirming that the executive board concurred in her proposal for a new general Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of $650 billion — the largest allocation in the IMF’s…