Healthcare workers and others recommended for the first Covid-19 inoculations could start getting shots within 24 hours after the vaccine receives regulatory authorization, the chief adviser for the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program said.
The United States entered the final month of 2020 with expectations that promising vaccine candidates will soon be approved to halt the rapidly spreading coronavirus after 4.2 million new cases were reported in November.
U.S. hospitals, weighing high demand and tight supplies, said they may limit use of the new Eli Lilly and Co. nantibody drug bamlanivimab to Covid-19 patients with multiple risk factors for serious illness or to those whose immune systems have not begun to fight the infection.
President Donald Trump, under fire over his handling of the coronavirus epidemic, announced that the federal government would ship 150 million rapid tests to U.S. states and warned an increase in positive cases is likely in the days ahead.
UTC Laboratories Inc. and the New Orleans-based genetics testing company’s three principals will pay $42.6 million to resolve charges they defrauded the federal government by paying kickbacks for referrals and billing for medically unnecessary tests, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released proposed legislation that would allow the federal government to negotiate the prices of hundreds of prescription drugs for Medicare healthcare beneficiaries as well as other consumers.
