Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. expects to start a late-stage U.S. study of the company’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the second quarter of 2021, the drug developer’s chief executive officer said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention administered 4,563,260 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the United States as of the morning of Jan. 4 and distributed 15,418,500 doses.
Calithera Biosciences reported that the company’s CANTATA clinical trial of telaglenastat in patients with advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) failed to hit the primary endpoint.
Britain became the first country to vaccinate its population with Oxford University and AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot on Jan. 4, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson was set to tighten restrictions in England in a bid to slow the spread of cases.
At the start of 2021, 70 companies raised the price of hundreds of prescription drugs by an average of 3.3%.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened 500 million fewer people at U.S. airport checkpoints in 2020, down 61% versus 2019, as air travel slowed sharply during the coronavirus pandemic.
Moderna Inc. plans to produce at least 600 million doses of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, up by 100 million doses from the previous forecast, as the United States continues to roll out the vaccine.
Leading U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci said he foresees America achieving enough collective Covid-19 immunity through vaccinations to regain “some semblance of normality” by autumn 2021, despite early setbacks in the vaccine rollout.
Sinopharm announced that the Chinese biopharmaceutical company’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate had an efficacy rate of 79% based on interim analysis of Phase III trials.
The first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was detected in Colorado on Dec. 29 as President-elect Joe Biden warned it could take years for most Americans to be vaccinated against Covid-19 at current distribution rates.
