Poorer nations during December 2021 rejected more than 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the global program COVAX, mainly due to their rapid expiration date, a UNICEF official said on January 13.
AstraZeneca said on January 13 that preliminary data from a trial showed that the company’s COVID-19 shot Vaxzevria generated an increase in antibodies against the Omicron and other variants when given as a third booster dose.
The highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease than the Delta strain but it remains a “dangerous virus,” particularly for those who are unvaccinated, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on January 12.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration added another warning to the regulatory agency’s fact sheet for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. In other news, as the Omicron variant rips through the United States, top health officials have noted that the variant is so contagious that if you come into contact with it, you are likely to catch it.
The spread of COVID-19 in the Americas driven by the Omicron variant of the virus reached levels of transmission never before seen during the pandemic, with cases doubling to 6.1 million over the past week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on January 12.
The Biden administration on January 12 announced a new set of measures to keep classes open, including doubling COVID-19 testing capacity in schools with 10 million more tests, as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly through the United States.
Japan recorded a surge in new coronavirus cases on January 12, with infections reaching four-month highs in the major metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka as the Omicron variant spreads.
President Joe Biden and top health officials on January 11 defended the government’s response to the unrelenting pandemic as daily U.S. COVID-19 cases reached a new high, largely fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
The United States agreed to buy 600,000 more doses of GSK and Vir Biotechnology’s COVID-19 antibody therapy for an undisclosed sum, as the country bolsters its arsenal of treatments against the Omicron coronavirus variant.
Shares in PharmaMar jumped almost 20 percent on January 11 after the Spanish drugmaker said lab trials suggested the company’s Plitidepsin drug was effective against the main COVID-19 variants, including the highly contagious Omicron.
