Vaccines

After the success of the Covid vaccine developed jointly with Biontech, US pharma giant Pfizer wants to further expand its vaccine business - possibly even without its German partner. "We're happy to work with Biontech, but we don't have to work with Biontech," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told the Wall Street Journal.

The novel mRNA technology has "dramatic potential" and Pfizer is confident it can now develop mRNA vaccines on its own, Bourla said, according to the editorial version distributed on the newspaper's website. "We have developed our own expertise." The two companies would continue to cooperate on Covid-19 vaccines.

According to documents obtained by The Washington Post from an internal investigation at Facebook, 111 users were responsible for half of all anti-vaccination content on the U.S. part of Facebook. Besides, there might be a significant overlap between communities that are sceptical of vaccines and those affiliated with QAnon.

Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever has stated that "Public health experts have made it clear that tackling vaccine hesitancy is a top priority in the COVID response, which is why we’ve launched a global campaign that has already connected 2 billion people to reliable information from health experts and remove false claims about COVID and vaccines,"

After her mother was vaccinated against Covid-19, a baby girl was born with antibodies that fight the coronavirus in Florida in the eastern United States.

The girl's mother was 36 weeks pregnant when she received the first dose of the antidote developed by the Moderna laboratory, to which she agreed because she was on the front line of the fight against the pandemic. The baby girl was born three weeks later, in late January.

"As far as we know, this is the world's first reported case of a baby born with covid-19 antibodies after her mother's vaccination," said Paul Gilbert, a pediatrician. Gilbert and Chad Rudnick, also a pediatrician, will publish a scientific paper on the matter, they said in an interview with Palm Beach television station WBPF.

Mainz-based BioNTech is working on an mRNA-based vaccine against multiple sclerosis. The first preclinical studies are promising; the vaccine approach was able to prevent MS disease in mice, and in mice that were already mildly ill, it was able to prevent the disease from progressing and motor functions could even be restored. The study on the mice is so promising that the start of clinical trials on humans is now the next goal, although these cannot begin for at least two years, as the approach must first be tested on human cells in the laboratory.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has announced that AstraZeneca has applied for approval of their Covid-19 which has been developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

According to the EMA "the assessment of the vaccine, known as COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, will proceed under an accelerated timeline" and added that "an opinion on the marketing authorisation could be issued by 29 January during the meeting of EMA’s scientific committee for human medicines (CHMP), provided that the data submitted on the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine are sufficiently robust and complete and that any additional information required to complete the assessment is promptly submitted."

Pharmaceutical company Sinopharm is the first manufacturer in China to announce details of the efficacy of its Corona vaccine. The company said that the vaccine is expected to provide more than 79 percent protection against Covid-19 (79.34 percent).

The release of the data is an important step toward final approval of the vaccine, doses of which have already been secured by countries outside China.

One ampoule of Biontech vaccine can often be used to produce six rations instead of five. The Mainz-based manufacturer Biontech has now submitted an application to the European Medicines Agency Ema for a change in the conditions of approval. The Ema had told the German newspaper SPIEGEL on Tuesday that if Biontech submitted an application to change the terms of its marketing authorisation, it would be "rapidly" reviewed by its human medicines committee.

Biontech is lobbying for doctors to be allowed to draw six full vaccine doses of 0.3 ml each from the provided vials containing a total of 2.25 ml of finished vaccine in the future - provided they can draw up six full doses.

The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has announced via Twitter that the European Medicines Agency has "just issued a positive scientific opinion on the #BioNTech / @pfizer vaccine". She now expects that the European Commission will decide "by this evening" if the vaccine will be permitted.

After the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced it would issue its decision on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 21, German Health Minister Jens Spahn, speaking at a joint press conference with the Robert Koch Institute, the government agency responsible for disease control and prevention, said the report was "good news."

A fortnight ago, BioNTech and Pfizer submitted an application to the EMA for conditional marketing authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine. President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that she welcomed the EMA's decision to bring the meeting forward.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency approval Friday evening to the vaccine made by Mainz-based biotech company Biontech and its partner Pfizer.

The Washington Post reported that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Hahn on Friday to resign if the vaccine, made by Mainz-based Biontech and its U.S. partner Pfizer, is not approved before the end of the day (local time).

Nicola Sturgeon, the first First Minister of Scotland, has announced that "initial supplies of the Covid vaccine have now arrived safely in Scotland and are being stored securely" adding that "the first vaccinations are on track to be administered on Tuesday".

The UK will be the first country in the West to offer a Covid-19 vaccine to the public after the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the vaccine in record time. The vaccine is expected to be rolled out from next week.

"The Government has today accepted the recommendation from the Independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to approve Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for use," the government said.

The UK has already ordered 40m doses - enough to vaccinate 20m people, and 10m doses should be available soon, with the first 800,000 arriving in the UK in the coming days.

According to his spokesperson, Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want to be vaccinated with the Russian "Sputnik V" vaccine. Even though Putin recently appraised the world's vaccine at the G20 summit as safe and effective, his spokesperson said that as head of state he could not participate in a vaccination campaign as a "volunteer". Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that tThe president cannot take an uncertified vaccine".

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced Monday that its Covid-19 vaccine has shown an average efficacy of 70% in large-scale trials. When given as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later, it showed 90% efficacy and with two full doses given a month apart, it showed 62% efficacy.

"What we've always tried to do with a vaccine is fool the immune system into thinking that there's a dangerous infection there that it needs to respond to -- but doing it in a very safe way. So we get the immune response and we get the immune memory ... waiting and ready if the pathogen itself is then encountered," so Professor Andrew Pollard, the trial's lead investigator at Oxford.

The US and Europe may grant emergency authorisation for Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine in early December after final trial results showed a 95% success rate and no serious side effects. Moderna's vaccine has also shown a 94.5% effectiveness.

Spain has announced to begin a comprehensive vaccination programme in January and hope to cover a substantial part of the population within three months, so prime minister, Pedro Sanchez.

A new Covid-19 vaccine, from the US company Moderna, is nearly 95% effective, early data show. The trial involved 30,000 people in the US, with half being given two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart.

"These effects are what we would expect with a vaccine that is working and inducing a good immune response," said Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London.

The World Health Organization has reported that measles cases and deaths have soared globally since 2016, with the global death tally of 2019 reaching 207,500 - 50 percent higher than just three years earlier.

Ethiopia set up a vaccination campaign in June which reached 14.5 million children. Alarmingly, the numbers of "zero-dose" children - those who had received no vaccines whatsoever - are beginning to rise again, with middle-income countries, including Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines, accounting for 9.5 million, or 69 percent.

The European Union will sign a fourth contract with the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and their German lab partner BioNTech to procure up to 300 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine, if proven to be safe and effective against the virus.

"As a company founded in the heart of Europe, we are looking forward to supplying millions of people upon regulatory approval," so BioNTech's CEO Ugur Sahin in a statement Wednesday. On Tuesday, Sahin said on a call with reporters that said BioNTech's goal is to ramp up production of their vaccine candidate in the hopes of manufacture up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.

The EU Commission has ended talks with the pharmaceutical companies Biontech and Pfizer on the supply of a corona vaccine. The vaccine developed by them prevents in more than 90 percent of cases a disease caused by the corona virus Covid-19, the pharmaceutical companies had announced.

According to the German Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn, the EU has also already concluded agreements with the pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca and Sanofi, which are also working on corona vaccines.

Head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has stated that a Covid-19 vaccine could be available in April 2021.

"The big numbers of supplies are due to start in April," so von der Leyen, adding that up to 50 million doses could be delivered monthly.