Italian prosecutors in the city of Bergamo, the epicentre of the country’s first COVID wave, are reportedly investigating Ranieri Guerra, a senior World Health Organization advisor, for misleading testimony and his role in the suppression of a WHO report into Italy’s coronavirus response “An Unprecedented Challenge“- which contained critical material about the Italian government’s […] Continue reading ->
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has officially authorized expanded capacity in three new vaccine manufacturing facilities on the continent producing AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – a move that the agency says should also help pharma suppliers ramp up their deliveries of now scarce vaccines to European Union bloc countries.  At the same time, a […] Continue reading ->
The European Medicines Agency’s safety committee (PRAC) on Thursday gave a resounding endorsement of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, concluding that the vaccine’s benefits vaccine “far outweigh” any risks  –  despite a possible link between some vaccinations and rare cases of blood clotting associated with low levels of blood platelets. The EMA statement followed two […] Continue reading ->
With the European Union Medicines Agency (EMA) approval Thursday of Johnson and Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine, it now remains to be seen which countries and regions will be the first in line for distribution of the one-jab vaccine. Along with its comparatively low-cost, and ease of storage, the one-shot vaccine could be particularly important to […] Continue reading ->
A two-day summit of the world’s top pharma and public health sector players to address COVID-19 vaccine supply chain and manufacturing bottlenecks ended on Tuesday with agreement that large vaccine manufacturing scale up potential exists – even in 2021 – but the route is complex and there are no easy fixes.  And most immediately, there […] Continue reading ->
The structural barriers to a faster and more equitable COVID-19 vaccine roll-out go far beyond the issue of patents, declared two of the world’s leading vaccine researchers and pharma execs at a WHO event on Monday evening.  Sarah Gilbert, developer of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and Özlem Türeci, chief medical officer of BioNTech, the developer of […] Continue reading ->