• The Biden administration announces a new public-private vaccine partnership that will expand US manufacturing capacity, with the goal of producing at least one billion doses a year beginning in the second half of 2022. BARDA (the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency) will issue a request for information to “to understand how most efficiently, effectively and reliably we can increase manufacturing,” soliciting ideas from companies experienced at manufacturing mRNA vaccines. Source
• Roche is discontinuing co-development of AT-527, an oral COVID-19 antiviral pill which failed to demonstrate efficacy in a phase II trial; Atea intends to launch a planned phase III trial on its own. Source
• Endpoints reports that Pfizer could generate from $15 to $25 billion from its experimental COVID-19 antiviral pill in 2022 – coming on top of its projected vaccine revenues of $36 billion for 2021. Source
• The US has spent $1 billion for 300,000 doses of a monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir. Source
• China’s daily coronavirus cases drop to eight, from a peak of over 100. Source
• Zheng Zhongwei, a senior official at China’s National Health Commission, announces that it will allow vaccine-mixing for booster doses, and that the country will introduce “an optimal immunisation combination” in the near future. Source
• France is facing a fifth wave of coronavirus, reporting over 20,000 new daily cases for the first time since late August, as hospitalizations and ICU admissions increase among COVID-19 patients. Source
• Novavax issues a press release to announce that the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted emergency use authorization for its recombinant nanoparticle protein-based, adjuvanted vaccine with, which will be marketed by India’s Serum Institute under the brand name COVOVAX. Source
• A pre-print retrospective analysis of the impact of pre- or post-infection vaccination on Long COVID symptoms drew from medical histories of 240,648 COVID-19 survivors. Overall, people who received at least one dose of an FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine 12 weeks before falling ill with COVID-19 were 7-10 times less likely to report two or more long-COVID symptoms versus unvaccinated patients. But people who received a single vaccine dose up to 12 weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19 were also significantly less likely to have long-COVID symptoms than unvaccinated people. The authors, who intend to do additional studies, suggest this finding demonstrates an “…added benefit to post-infection vaccination, and further indicate [s] that the earlier vaccine is administered, the more significant the benefit.” Source