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Sanders Tells Moderna Planned COVID Vaccine Price Hike Is ‘Unacceptable Corporate Greed’
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling on Moderna not to quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine, saying Tuesday that the plan amounts to “unacceptable corporate greed.”
In a Tuesday letter sent to Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, Sanders urged the company to reconsider its decision and refrain from any price increase “in light of the role the federal government has played in the development of the vaccine.”
Sanders, the incoming chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said the company’s decision to charge up to $130 a dose once the shots move to the commercial marketplace is “outrageous” and will cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Bancel told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that Moderna is considering charging between $110 to $130 per dose in the U.S. when the government’s contract ends and the vaccine shifts to commercial distribution.
Deadline Passes for Pfizer to Submit Results of Post-Vaccination Heart Inflammation Study to U.S. Regulators
The deadline has passed for Pfizer to submit the results of a study exploring the frequency of heart inflammation following receipt of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer was required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct multiple studies on its vaccine after the FDA approved the shot in August 2021 because regulators determined that without the studies, there would not be sufficient data to assess the “known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis,” or heart inflammation and a related condition.
Regulators were also concerned about the potential risk of subclinical myocarditis, or heart inflammation without typical symptoms.
The FDA told Pfizer to carry out six studies, with various deadlines for completion and reporting final results to the agency. The first final deadline arrived on Dec. 31, 2022. Pfizer was required to submit a report on the study, which was to assess the incidence of subclinical myocarditis following administration of a third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, or a booster shot, in people aged 16 to 30.
It’s unclear whether Pfizer met the deadline. The company and the FDA did not respond to requests for comment, and neither has issued any information about the study or its results since the deadline passed.
Judge Finds School Has Immunity in Unauthorized Vaccination of 6-Year-Old
Brattleboro Reformer reported:
A judge dealt some blows to a lawsuit seeking damages related to the vaccination of a 6-year-old for COVID-19 against his parents’ wishes at a West Brattleboro elementary school.
Last week, Judge Michael Kainen granted the state of Vermont’s motion to dismiss the suit and the Windham Southeast School District’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. The lawsuit was filed in Windham Superior Court, Civil Division by Tony and Shujen Politella of Brattleboro, the parents of the Academy School student, who are being represented by attorney Ron Ferrara of Fitts, Olson, Giddings & Ferrara in Brattleboro.
“The court found that federal law granted the district immunity based on the administration of the vaccine,” Pietro Lynn, attorney for the school district, said in an email response to the Reformer. “It is possible that other claims could be raised that fall outside the immunity grant, but those have not yet been raised.”
In a statement to the Reformer, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office said, “Under federal law, claims can only be brought based on the administration of a pandemic countermeasure if willful misconduct caused a death or serious physical injury, which did not happen here. The Court agreed with the State’s analysis of federal law and appropriately dismissed the case.”
Biden Administration Extends COVID Public Health Emergency as Highly Infectious Omicron XBB.1.5 Spreads
The Biden administration has extended the COVID-19 public health emergency until April as a highly transmissible Omicron subvariant stokes concern that the U.S. may face another wave of hospitalizations from the disease this winter.
The U.S. has renewed the COVID public health emergency every 90 days since the Trump administration first issued the declaration in January 2020.
In August, HHS told local and state health officials to start preparing for an end to the emergency in the near future. HHS has committed to giving state governments and healthcare providers 60 days’ notice before lifting the declaration.
President Joe Biden said the pandemic was over in September, a period when infections, hospitalizations and deaths were all declining. But HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters during a call in October that what the virus does this winter would determine whether or not the emergency needs to continue.
JPM23: Pfizer Entering the ‘Most Important’ 18-Month Stretch in Company History, CEO Says
Pfizer was among the drugmakers most elevated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and, going forward, the pharma giant has no plans to give up on its current momentum. Speaking this week at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ph.D., laid out scenarios that could take the drugmaker to $84 billion — or $70 billion in a less optimistic case — in non-COVID revenues in 2030.
That’d be a huge increase from 2020 when the drugmaker pulled down $41.9 billion globally. Of course, Pfizer’s trajectory changed after the company launched its massively successful COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and its antiviral Paxlovid.
To reach those 2030 revenue goals, the company is entering “the most important 18 months in the history of Pfizer,” Bourla said Monday. That’s because the company is planning 19 drug launches or label expansions over the next year and a half.
Those launches, in total, should generate $20 billion in sales by 2030, Bourla said. The group includes an RSV vaccine, elranatamab in multiple myeloma, ritlecitinib in alopecia areata and many other products.
MEPs Want to Grill Von Der Leyen Over Pfizer Vaccine Contract
An unwanted invite may soon be landing in Ursula von der Leyen’s mailbox. The MEPs leading the European Parliament’s COVID-19 committee have decided to ask the president of the European Commission to appear publicly in front of the panel, according to a statement sent exclusively to POLITICO by the committee’s chair, Belgian MEP Kathleen Van Brempt.
Lawmakers want to ask von der Leyen about her role in negotiating a massive, multibillion-euro coronavirus vaccine contract signed at the height of the pandemic. It was in the run-up to this contract that she is reported to have exchanged text messages with Pfizer‘s Chief Executive Albert Bourla.
“The European Union has spent a lot of public resources into the production and purchase of vaccines during the pandemic,” Van Brempt said in the statement. “[T]he Parliament has the right to obtain full transparency on the modalities of these expenditures and the preliminary negotiations leading up to them.”
So far, the Commission President has dodged questions about what went down in those crucial months. Neither the EU’s ombudsman nor the Court of Auditors has been able to shed a light on the murky dealings. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is armed with legal powers that the other watchdog agencies lack, has opened an investigation into the vaccine contracts, without saying whether the Commission President is its target.
COVID Is More Widespread in Animals Than We Thought
We think of COVID-19 as a human pandemic, but it’s much more than that. The virus that causes the disease, SARS-CoV-2, can infect a wide and growing range of animals, both captive and wild.
So far, the virus has been detected in more than a hundred domestic cats and dogs, as well as captive tigers, lions, gorillas, snow leopards, otters and spotted hyenas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Zoo staff in the U.S. have recorded a single positive case in a binturong, coati, cougar, domestic ferret, fishing cat, lynx, mandrill and squirrel monkey.
In the United States, only three wild species — mink, mule deer and white-tailed deer — have tested positive, according to the USDA. Cases have been detected elsewhere in the world in wild black-tailed marmosets, big hairy armadillos and a leopard.
Another recently submitted paper also found signs of the pathogen infecting 17% of New York City sewer rats tested. And a small percentage of wild white-footed mice in Connecticut have also become infected, according to research by Rebecca Earnest, a doctoral student at Yale University.
‘A Great Day for the Country’: Uganda Declares an End to Ebola Outbreak
The Ugandan government has declared an end to its Ebola outbreak, less than four months after cases were first reported.
The country has reported no new infections in more than 42 days — twice the maximum incubation period of the virus, a World Health Organization benchmark for a country to be declared Ebola-free.
The latest outbreak of the Sudan strain of the virus was one of the worst Uganda has experienced in two decades. There is currently no vaccine against the strain.
Trials for a vaccine against the Sudan strain are underway. Government officials signaled an intention to continue to develop vaccines from the Sabin Vaccine Institute in the US, Oxford University, the Jenner Institute in the UK, the Serum Institute of India and the International Aids Vaccine Initiative.
