AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine still has market potential despite an expected global oversupply of shots and delays in the vaccine’s approval in the United States, the company’s chief executive Pascal Soriot said on April 29.
A shareholder proposal calling on Moderna Inc. to study transferring production of COVID-19 vaccines to less-developed countries won 24 percent support from investors on April 28 after the company received a rare endorsement from the World Health Organization.
Moderna Inc. asked U.S. regulators to authorize the company’s COVID-19 vaccine for children under the age of 6, which would make it the first shot against the coronavirus available for those under 5-years-old.
The Rockefeller Foundation announced the launch of the Global Vaccination Initiative, a $55 million investment over two years to support country-led efforts to fully vaccinate 90% of the most at-risk populations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Pfizer Inc. and the company’s partner BioNTech SE said on April 26 that they had submitted an application to the U.S. health regulator for the authorization of a booster dose of their COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years.
ReutersValneva said on April 25 that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had asked for more data on the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, precipitating a sharp fall in the French drugmaker’s shares.
Novavax shared positive initial results from the Phase I/II clinical study of the company’s proposed combination vaccine for COVID-19.
ReutersCureVac and GSK’s second-generation vaccine candidate targeting two recent COVID-19 variants has been shown to be highly effective in preclinical studies on mice, CureVac said, as the biotech firm seeks to catch up with rivals’ development work.
ReutersModerna plans to submit an application to the U.S. health regulator for emergency use authorization (EUA) of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine among kids between the ages of six months to five years by the end of the month, a company spokesperson said.
ReutersCOVID-19 cases and deaths are declining in the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on April 20, with infections last week having dropped 2.3 percent and deaths falling 15.2 percent from the prior week. The broad trend comes even as cases have scaled up in North America with an 11.2 percent increase last week, the organization said.
