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Vaccinated First-Time Mother With COVID Intubated Days After Delivering Baby

Newsweek reported:

A Texas mother is fighting for her life after she was intubated just days after giving birth to her first child despite being vaccinated.

Alexandra Chandler tested positive for COVID-19 before going into labor on Jan. 9, according to a GoFundMe page. Three days after a successful c-section, Chandler and her son Beau returned home.

The next day Chandler and her son Beau began experiencing shortness of breath. Both Chandler and her newborn son went to the ER to undergo evaluation, but Chandler’s health began to rapidly decline.

Patient Removed From Heart Transplant List for Refusing COVID Vaccine

The Guardian reported:

A Boston-area hospital said it will not perform a heart transplant on a patient who refuses to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

DJ Ferguson, 31, was previously prioritized for a heart transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, but is no longer eligible as he refuses to get vaccinated, said Ferguson’s family, according to a report by CBS Boston.

Ferguson’s family has said they are unsure of what to do next given his refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. They have considered transferring him to a different facility but acknowledge he might not survive the trip.

Pfizer and BioNTech Begin Clinical Trial for Omicron-Specific Vaccine

CNN Health reported:

Pfizer and BioNTech have begun a clinical trial for their Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine candidate, they announced in a news release on Tuesday.

The study will evaluate the vaccine for safety, tolerability and the level of immune response, as both a primary series and a booster dose, in up to 1,420 healthy adults ages 18 to 55.

BioNTech: Watchdogs’ Requirements May Defer Planned Launch of Omicron Shot

Reuters reported:

BioNTech (22UAy.DE) said it and partner Pfizer (PFE.N) may not be able to stick with their plan to launch an Omicron-targeting vaccine by the end of March, depending on how much clinical trial data regulators will require.

“Regulatory requirements are currently under discussion with the relevant authorities. Inclusion of clinical trial data in the regulatory filings may have an impact on the delivery of initial batches, currently expected to be ready by end of March,” a spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday.

Pfizer and BioNTech said earlier they started a clinical trial to test a new version of their vaccine specifically designed to target the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which has eluded some of the protection provided by the original two-dose vaccine regimen.

CDC Study: Omicron Appears to Cause Less Severe Disease

The Hill reported:

The Omicron variant is on average causing less severe disease than surges with previous variants of the virus, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study finds.

The ratio of hospital admissions to cases and ratio of deaths to cases were lower during the Omicron wave than during the Delta variant peak last year or the winter of 2020-2021, the study found.

J&J Expects Jump in COVID Vaccine Sales in 2022, Eyes Device Deals

Reuters reported:

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) on Tuesday forecast as much as $3.5 billion in sales of its COVID-19 vaccine in 2022, a 46% jump for the shot that has fared poorly compared to rivals, and said it would take a more aggressive stance on deals for its medical device unit.

J&J’s 2022 revenue forecast for the vaccine was above Wall Street estimates, which had been lowered due to safety concerns as well as low uptake in the United States.

Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) by comparison is forecasting $29 billion in 2022 sales of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with German partner BioNTech SE , while Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) is projecting $18.5 billion in vaccine sales this year.

FBI Searches Headquarters of National COVID Testing Company

NBC News reported:

Federal agents executed a search warrant at the Chicago-area headquarters of a national pop-up testing chain called the Center for COVID Control, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services inspector general said Monday.

The Center for COVID Control has the same registered address as a laboratory called Doctors Clinical Laboratory, which conducted hundreds of thousands of PCR tests using specimens collected by the pop-up testing company, a company spokesperson said.

Both the pop-up testing company and the lab have been under investigation by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as multiple state attorneys general.

The company has billed the federal government more than $120 million for testing uninsured people, according to federal records.

DeSantis Opens New Battle With Biden Over COVID Treatments

Politico reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis has picked a new fight with the Biden administration over COVID treatments.

DeSantis shut down the five state administration sites he opened last week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday cut Florida’s weekly allotment of monoclonal antibody cocktails. DeSantis fired back at the Biden administration for pulling the medicines, claiming the federal government withdrew the treatments without evidence.

“We’re going to fight back against this because this is just wrong,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference in Crawfordville, about 20 miles from the Capitol in Tallahassee. “This is not the way you know that you help people.”

Stealth Omicron Sub-Variant BA.2 Found in Almost Half of U.S. States

Newsweek reported:

Almost 100 cases of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 have been detected in the U.S. across more than 20 states, virus genetic data shows.

According to the virus database GISAID, which scientists can use to share sequenced COVID samples from around the world, 92 BA.2 cases had been reported from the U.S. by about 5:15 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

Experts say it’s too early to know whether BA.2 will cause a difference in disease severity compared to BA.1, though Cornelius Roemer, a computational biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, called it “the Omicron sibling to watch” in a tweet on Monday.

Subject Expert Committee Says No to Clinical Trial Waiver for Pfizer’s COVID Pill

The Economic Times reported:

The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) under India’s drug regulator turned down applications by Hetero Labs and Optimus Pharma to launch the generic version of Pfizer‘s COVID-19 antiviral drug paxlovid without local clinical trials. Both companies had approached the drug regulator last week seeking waivers.

The SEC asked the companies to conduct bioavailability and bioequivalence (BA/BE) studies and submit safety data at its meeting on Friday, said people with knowledge of the matter.