Russia’s speedy approval of a COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday has drawn widespread criticism from Health Ministers, researchers, and even a Russian pharma industry group. However, it has also spurred interest and offers to collaborate on testing the new vaccine in other countries, including from quarters as farflung as Israel and the Philippines. The Russian COVID-19 […] Continue reading ->
More than US $100 billion will be required just to scale-up manufacturing and ensure worldwide distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in prepared remarks at a WHO press conference on Monday. He said that the World Health Organization’s ACT Accelerator consortium has received only 10% of the funding that […] Continue reading ->
To facilitate equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines, WHO launched the COVID-19 Access Accelerator (ACT) in April. COVAX is the vaccine component of this initiative. It is led by WHO, the Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Geneva-based Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI). Heidi.news spoke with Gavi’s Executive Director, Seth […] Continue reading ->
In the unprecedented race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, the World Health Organization says that there are no “cutting corners” in testing the safety and efficacy of a new vaccine candidate. Vaccine development has moved at an unprecedented pace. In six months, some 26 candidates are already undergoing human testing, while 139 more are in […] Continue reading ->
European legislation on drugs for rare diseases is “far from perfect”, but it is not a ‘failure’ given the amount of private sector investment it has attracted in the past two decades, says Yann Le Cam, CEO of EURORDIS – Rare Diseases Europe, a non-profit alliance of some 930 rare disease patient organisations across 72 […] Continue reading ->
Amidst the battle against a new infectious threat, the fight against tuberculosis, one of humankind’s oldest recorded infectious diseases, is also progressing. Pretomanid – only the second TB drug to hit the market in over two decades – received conditional marketing approval Monday from the European Commission as part of a new, three-drug treatment regimen […] Continue reading ->
Italy has become the first nation to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose secret data about any public subsidies it may have received for the development of a new drug, during negotiations over drug pricing and reimbursement with national regulatory authorities, according to a decree published Friday in the nation’s official gazette. The decree, following on […] Continue reading ->
In a landmark achievement, incidence of chronic hepatitis B has successfully dropped below 1% in children under five, reaching the 2020 goal set at the 2016 World Health Assembly, said World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus on Monday. The target reduction in hepatitis B virus (HBV) incidence in children was met in 2019, […] Continue reading ->
Moderna, a frontrunner in the COVID-19 vaccine development race, today entered the final phase of testing required before pursuing regulatory approval, beginning the Phase III trial for their vaccine candidate mRNA-1273. The trial, titled COVE (Coronavirus Efficacy), will measure how well a 100 microgram dose of the vaccine can protect people against developing symptomatic COVID-19 […] Continue reading ->
In the largest and perhaps most robust peer-reviewed study to date, A COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by pharma giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University has been shown to induce strong antibody and T cell responses in healthy volunteers, according to Phase 1/2 trial results published in The Lancet on Monday. Most studies so far have focused on […] Continue reading ->