Category Archives: Pharmaceuticals industry

How effective is the Novavax Covid vaccine and will it work against variants?

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Everything you need to know about the trial results for a new coronavirus vaccine

In an interim analysis of a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the UK, the vaccine has shown 89% efficacy, with 27% of participants in the trial – almost 4,000 people – older than 65. That trial suggested 95.6% efficacy against the original coronavirus and 85.6% efficacy against the more recent UK strain. Those results were based on the first 62 cases of Covid-19 identified among volunteers, with 56 cases among those given a placebo against just six in those given the vaccine.

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EU could block millions of Covid vaccine doses from entering UK

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European commission says new mechanism will give national regulators power to refuse exports

Millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.

Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests. The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.

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Britain and EU clash over claims to UK-produced Covid vaccine

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EU health commissioner dismisses AstraZeneca argument it is contractually obliged to supply UK first

Britain is on a collision course with the European Union over vaccine shortages after Brussels refused to accept that people in the UK have first claim on Oxford/AstraZeneca doses produced in local plants.

The EU’s health commissioner outright dismissed on Wednesday an argument made by Pascal Soriot, the Anglo-Swedish company’s chief executive, that he was contractually obliged to supply the UK first.

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Why the EU and AstraZeneca are stuck in a Covid vaccines row

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Explainer: AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot gives insight into ‘glitches’ that constrained production

The chief executive of AstraZeneca has dismissed suggestions that the UK is being unfairly prioritised for Covid-19 vaccine doses, in a wide-ranging interview revealing “glitches” that have constrained production.

Pascal Soriot offered the deepest insight yet into a scientific process that has been dragged into the political sphere, as leaders in Brussels and several EU capitals voiced anger that Europe will not get the vaccine as quickly as hoped.

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Head of AstraZeneca confirms UK has prior claim on vaccine

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Chief executive of pharmaceutical giant says the firm will honour UK’s earlier contract despite EU anger over shortfall

AstraZeneca’s chief executive has insisted the UK will come first for vaccines as he rejected calls to divert doses to the European Union following a breakdown in supply.

Amid a growing row, Pascal Soriot, the French head of the pharmaceutical giant, said the UK was benefiting from being early to sign a contract for 100m doses.

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EU means business over Covid vaccine exports, says Von der Leyen

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Commission president says firms must deliver on orders after AstraZeneca warns of shortfall

The EU “means business”, Ursula von der Leyen has said, as the bloc doubled down on plans for tighter monitoring of vaccine exports to countries outside of the union, such as the UK.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the president of the European commission said the EU had invested billions and “companies must now deliver” to the 27 member states.

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Pharmaceutical giants not ready for next pandemic, report warns

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Ten of the world’s most infectious diseases identified by the WHO not being catered for by drug firms

The world’s biggest pharmaceutical firms are little prepared for the next pandemic despite a mounting response to the Covid-19 outbreak, an independent report has warned.

Jayasree K Iyer, executive director of the Netherlands-based Access to Medicine Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation funded by the UK and Dutch governments and others, highlighted an outbreak of the Nipah virus in China, with a fatality rate of up to 75%, as potentially the next big pandemic risk.

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I’ve had my first vaccine jab. It gives me hope of liberation… but not yet

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Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievement

I marked a grim anniversary in an unexpected manner last week. On 18 January last year, I wrote my first story about a mysterious disease that had struck Wuhan, in China, and which was now spreading around the world. More than two million individuals have since died of Covid-19, almost 100,000 of them in the UK.

Remarkably, 12 months to the day that the Observer published my story, I was given my first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, allowing me to follow nearly six million other newly immunised UK residents who are set to gain protection against a disease that has brought the planet to a standstill. It was a rare, comforting experience after a year of unremitting sadness and gloom.

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World’s poor need action, not Covid ‘vaccine nationalism’, say experts

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Nations outbidding each other creates an ‘immoral race towards the abyss’

Pharmaceutical companies should do more to transfer vaccine technology to prevent the poorest countries falling behind in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, according to an expert.

The warning came from Dag-Inge Ulstein, the co-chair of the global council trying to speed up access to Covid vaccines for the world’s poor, known as the Act (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator. Ulstein, Norway’s international development minister, oversees the drive to ensure vaccines reach the poor – the Covax programme.

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Single Covid vaccine dose in Israel ‘less effective than we thought’

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Surge in infections dampens optimism over country’s advanced immunisation programme

Israel’s coronavirus tsar has warned that a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be providing less protection than originally hoped, as the country reported a record 10,000 new Covid infections on Monday.

In remarks reported by Army Radio, Nachman Ash said a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and also lower than Pfizer had suggested.

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EU’s Covid vaccination debacle is down to institutional inflexibility

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Supply delays underline there was no legal or economic justification for central planning

A storm is raging over the EU’s failure to have ordered more of the approved Covid-19 vaccines ahead of time. Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of the US pharmaceutical company Moderna, which gained approval for its vaccine shortly after Pfizer/BioNTech, claims that the EU has relied too much on “vaccines from its own laboratories”.

Did the European commission prioritise supporting its own pharmaceutical industry over protecting human lives? In fact, matters are not as simple as that. Contrary to what Bancel wants us to believe, the EU has actually ordered too little of its own vaccine. After all, the vaccine that is being administered most widely across the west was developed by a German company, BioNTech, and thus comes from the EU (though it was tested and partly produced in partnership with Pfizer in the US and with Fosun Pharma in China).

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Australia’s chief medical officer defends AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine amid efficacy concerns

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Australia has secured 54m doses of the vaccine some experts say is inferior to Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, which Australia has bought just 10m doses of

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    • Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, and infectious diseases experts have defended securing 54m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine made by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, amid concerns the vaccine will not be effective enough to achieve herd immunity.

    The president of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology, Prof Stephen Turner, told Nine media that Australia should halt the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout because it has “lower efficacy”.

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    Analysis: is it wise for England to mix and match Covid vaccines?

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    US experts warn against plan to give different second jab if supplies run low

    The UK is setting the pace around the world in the approval and use of Covid vaccines but, while other countries watch intently, not all are yet prepared to embrace what looks like public health pragmatism rather than strict adherence to evidence.

    Britain is the first country in the world to approve and use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, just as it was first with Pfizer/BioNTech’s. In a further trailblazing decision, it is giving everyone a first shot of either of those vaccines, with the second shot delayed to 12 weeks afterwards instead of the three- or four-week interval in the trials.

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    How is the Oxford Covid vaccine being deployed in England?

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    With jab to be administered to public for first time, we look at key questions about its rollout

    The biggest vaccination programme in the UK’s history will receive a major boost on Monday, with the first use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. Here we look at some key questions about how it will be deployed in England.

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    What difference will Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine make in UK?

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    We look at how the introduction of a new vaccine in the fight against Covid will work

    The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is central to the government’s plans for ending social distancing in the UK and returning to some sort of normality. It has invested in seven different vaccines, but the biggest order is for 100m doses of the AstraZeneca jab, most of which will be manufactured in the UK. While the prime minister was jubilant that the UK was first in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, he is now able to claim a British triumph. More to the point is the ease of use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Unlike Pfizer’s, it does not have to be kept in the long term at -70C. Pfizer’s vaccine can be stored in a fridge for five days, but AstraZeneca’s can be kept for months at fridge temperature, which is 2-8C and will be easy to take to care homes to administer to residents, the first priority group for vaccination.

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    BioNTech criticises EU failure to order enough Covid vaccine

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    Firm races to fill potential gap left by bloc’s gamble on several vaccines being approved

    BioNtech has criticised the EU’s failure to order more doses of its coronavirus vaccine, saying it is now racing with its US partner, Pfizer, to boost production amid fears of a European “gap” left by the lack of other approved vaccines.

    The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the first to be approved by the bloc late last month, after being accepted by the UK, Canada and the US. They and other countries have also since approved the Moderna or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, leaving the EU trailing behind.

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    Questions hang over UK’s rollout of Oxford/AstraZeneca jab

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    Analysis: regulator surprises by approving 12-week gap between first and second shots of vaccine as well as Pfizer/BioNTech shot

    It’s a pragmatic solution to an incredibly urgent problem – how to immunise very large numbers of people at risk from a rampaging variant of Covid-19 in the shortest possible time. The answer that government advisers have come up with is to give them all – more than 20 million of them – a single shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine so that they have some protection and postpone the second dose to three months afterwards, when hopefully there will be plenty of vaccine available for boosters.

    Related: How well does the Oxford vaccine work? What we know so far

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    UK scientists trial drug to prevent infection that leads to Covid

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    Exclusive: Antibody therapy could confer instant immunity to Covid-19 on at-risk groups

    British scientists are trialling a new drug that could prevent someone who has been exposed to coronavirus from going on to develop the disease Covid-19, which experts say could save many lives.

    The antibody therapy would confer instant immunity against the disease and could be given as an emergency treatment to hospital inpatients and care home residents to help contain outbreaks.

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    BioNTech vaccine ‘highly likely’ to work against new Covid variant, says chief executive – video

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    The chief executive of the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech said he was confident its coronavirus vaccine worked against the new UK variant, but that further studies were needed to be certain. 'Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants,' Uğur Şahin said. If the vaccine needs to be adjusted for the new variant, the company could do that in about six weeks, he added

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    Belgian minister tweets EU’s Covid vaccine price list to anger of manufacturers

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    Pharmaceutical companies complain of breach of confidentiality after amount EU has agreed to pay for leading vaccines goes public

    A Belgian minister has blown the lid off a sensitive and commercial secret – the price that the EU has agreed to pay for the leading Covid vaccines.

    Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that her country intends to buy from the EU. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.

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