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Pfizer Expects to Hike U.S. COVID Vaccine Price to $110-$130 per Dose
Pfizer Inc. expects to roughly quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to about $110 to $130 per dose after the United States government’s current purchase program expires, Pfizer executive Angela Lukin said on Thursday.
Lukin said she expects the vaccine — currently provided for free to all by the government — will be made available at no cost to people who have private insurance or government-paid insurance.
Reuters earlier on Thursday reported that Wall Street was expecting such price hikes due to weak demand for COVID vaccines, which meant vaccine makers would need to hike prices to meet revenue forecasts for 2023 and beyond.
The U.S. government currently pays around $30 per dose to Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE). In 2023, the market is expected to move to private insurance after the U.S. public health emergency expires.
CDC Advisers Recommend Adding COVID Shots to Routine Immunization Schedules for Kids, Adults
The CDC’s independent vaccine advisers voted 15-0 Thursday to add most COVID-19 vaccines offered in the U.S. to the childhood, adolescent and adult immunization schedules.
COVID vaccines’ inclusion on the schedules doesn’t constitute mandates, particularly for schoolchildren, which are the purview of states, localities or jurisdictions, depending on local laws. Still, the committee’s vote sparked controversy and debate on social media about what the additions mean for vaccine requirements after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asserted Tuesday that the CDC would trigger mandates for students.
Advisory panel member Matthew Daley, a senior investigator at the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, said, “I will acknowledge … there is symbolism in adding COVID-19 to the childhood immunization schedule, and that symbolism is that we view this as routine and that we view this as COVID is here to stay.”
CDC: Monovalent Vax Has ‘Limited’ Protection Against BA.4/5 Hospitalization — Vaccine Effectiveness Against Latest Variants Declined to 29% at 4 Months After Third Dose
A monovalent mRNA booster dose offered “limited” protection against COVID-related hospitalizations from the currently circulating Omicron variants, a CDC analysis found, likely due to the waning effects of the vaccines and potentially more immune evasion with BA.4/BA.5.
During the period of BA.4/BA.5 specifically, protection against hospitalization declined from 60% (95% CI 12-81) in the first 4 months from the third dose to 29% (95% CI 3-48) thereafter, according to their findings in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
A second study, also published in MMWR, showed similar declines for individuals with immunocompromising conditions during the period of Omicron predominance. Vaccine effectiveness against COVID-related hospitalizations with three doses was 67% (95% CI 63-71) during the BA.1 period in this population, which fell to 32% (95% CI 22-42) during periods of BA.2/BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 circulation, according to researchers led by Amadea Britton, MD, also of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team.
Cases of BQ.1/BQ.1.1 Variants Double in U.S., Europe Warns of Rise
U.S. health regulators on Friday estimated that BQ.1 and closely related BQ.1.1 accounted for 16.6% of coronavirus variants in the country, nearly doubling from last week, while Europe expects them to become the dominant variants in a month.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the variants are likely to drive up cases in the coming weeks to months in the European region.
The two variants are descendants of Omicron‘s BA.5 subvariant, which is the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States. Regulators in Europe and the U.S. have recently authorized vaccine boosters that target it.
‘No Quick Fixes’: Walensky’s Push for Change at CDC Meets Reality
The CDC’s new push to get information about health crises out faster to Americans is already running up against its limited authority, congressional inaction and the agency’s own entrenched culture.
In August, Director Rochelle Walensky ordered an overhaul of the CDC after its bungled COVID-19 response, including a drive to share research and data sooner and be more open with the public about what agency scientists do — and don’t — know.
But the CDC’s inability to compel states to share information about disease outbreaks is getting in the way of the effort, said Walensky, who added that the agency needs more money from Congress to draw in new talent and train the public health workforce to speed up the information flow to the public.
In an interview with POLITICO, Walensky said it is critical for the CDC to communicate with Americans more quickly — even when it doesn’t know everything.
What Europe’s COVID Wave Means for the U.S.
Winter is coming. Again. For the past two years, colder temperatures have brought seasonal COVID upticks, which turned into massive waves when ill-timed new variants emerged. In Western Europe, the first part of that story certainly seems to be playing out again. Cases and hospitalizations started going up last month. No new variant has become dominant yet, but experts are monitoring a pair of potentially troubling viral offshoots called BQ.1 and XBB.
“We have the seasonal rise that’s in motion already,” says Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern, in Switzerland. If one of these new variants comes in on top of that, Europe could end up with yet another double whammy.
The U.S. may not be far behind. America’s COVID numbers are falling when aggregated across the country, but this isn’t true in every region. The decline is largely driven by trends in California, says Samuel Scarpino, the vice president of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Initiative. In chillier New England, hospitalization numbers have already ticked up by as much as nearly 30%, and more virus is showing up in wastewater, too.
Telemedicine Works. But States Are Killing It off.
Texans dodged a bullet Wednesday when Gov. Greg Abbott decided to extend the state’s COVID-19 disaster declaration and, with it, to avoid extinguishing one of the few bright lights of the pandemic. Thanks to the extension, Texans can continue the expanded access to telemedicine conferred under the declaration. But the extension is only certain for the next month. Without recertification, the Lone Star State will join the 39 others that have re-erected their pre-COVID barriers to telehealth.
Red tape and restrictions on telemedicine — healthcare services provided to patients remotely via the internet or telephone — need to be removed to make such care viable, particularly state licensing requirements and insurance reimbursement policies that require in-person visits. During the pandemic, states and insurers overnight did what years of advocacy for telemedicine had failed to accomplish.
Now, though, as the country works its way back to a “new normal,” fewer states are maintaining any of the loosened requirements. If the exemption in Texas expires, only 10 states will provide the waivers that continue to make telehealth more accessible.
