U.S. President Joe Biden secured a commitment from Pfizer Inc. to double the Covid-19 vaccine the company churns out in the coming weeks, putting his goal to fill the country’s inoculation stockpile by summer in sight.
Novavax announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to provide 1.1 billion doses of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate NVX-CoV2373 for the COVAX Facility.
The two Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States have reassuring safety profiles, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Feb. 19 after monitoring the first month of vaccinations between December 2020 and January 2021.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine is more effective when its second dose is given three months after the first, instead of six weeks, a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet medical journal showed on Feb. 19.
Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine greatly reduces virus transmission, according to two Israeli studies, shedding light on one of the biggest questions of the global effort to quash the pandemic.
The United States reported a 23% drop in new cases of Covid-19 and a 16% fall in the number of people hospitalized with the virus for the week ended Feb. 14, with both figures declining for a fifth week in a row.
The White House is increasing the supply of coronavirus vaccines sent each week to states to 13.5 million doses, and is also doubling the amount shipped to pharmacies to 2 million doses during the week of Feb. 15.
The World Health Organization asked six African countries to be alert for possible Ebola infections, as Guinea on Feb. 16 reported new cases and Democratic Republic of Congo said its new infections were a resurgence of a previous outbreak.
South Korea’s intelligence agency said North Korea attempted to steal information on coronavirus vaccines and treatments by hacking Pfizer Inc., a lawmaker briefed by the agency said.
A judge in Hawaii ordered Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Sanofi SA to pay more than $834 million to the state for failing to warn non-white patients properly of health risks from the blood thinner Plavix.
