Tag Archives: Biotechnology

Health

CDC director says schools can safely reopen without vaccinating teachers

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Rochelle Walensky, who has been nominated to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks after US President-elect Joe Biden announced his team tasked with dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware on December 8, 2020.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

Teachers do not need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 before schools can safely reopen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

“There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House press briefing on Covid-19.

“Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools,” she added.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to put “frontline essential workers,” which include teachers, next in line to receive a Covid-19 vaccine after first prioritizing health-care workers and long-term care facility residents. However, it may take a while for most teachers to get their shots as U.S. officials work to pick up the pace of vaccinations.

Still, school systems across the U.S. have been under pressure to reopen after shifting to remote learning last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 26.4 million Americans and killed at least 447,077 in a little over a year.

Some parents have been forced to stay at home to watch their children instead of going to work. Meanwhile, teachers and other faculty have expressed concerns about returning to school, potentially put their health at risk.

A study from the CDC published late last month found little evidence of the virus spreading at schools in the U.S. and abroad when precautions were taken, such as wearing masks, social distancing and ventilating rooms.

The Biden administration has released a Covid rescue plan that includes providing schools and universities $170 billion to reopen. The money would be used in part to scale up testing. The administration has said testing is a “critical” strategy for controlling the spread of the virus, but added tests are still not widely available, and the U.S. is still not using the ones it has effectively.

Walensky has previously said that schools should be the first to open and the last to close in the pandemic.

Jeff Zients, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 czar, said Wednesday that Biden has been “very clear” that he wants schools to “reopen and to stay open.”

“That means every school has the equipment and the resources to open safely,” he said during the press briefing, urging Congress to “do its part” by passing Biden’s Covid rescue plan. “Not just private schools or schools in wealthy areas but all schools.”

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Business

There will be enough Covid vaccines for the ‘entire U.S. adult population by June,’ doctor says

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Johnson & Johnson board member Dr. Mark McClellan told CNBC Friday that there could be enough vaccinations for the entire U.S. adult population by the summer. 

“Assuming all of the close review of the J&J data all pans out, we’re going to have the capacity between Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, to have enough vaccines available by June for the entire U.S. adult population,” McClellan, a former FDA commissioner, said on “The News with Shepard Smith.” 

The U.S. plans to buy 200 million Covid vaccine doses from Moderna and Pfizer. The Department of Health and Human Services will boost its vaccine supply to states from 8.6 million to a minimum of 10 million doses per week. So far, states have received more than 49 million doses, but only about half of those have actually ended up in people’s arms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency reports that the U.S. is administering a little more than a million shots every day.

McClellan that the U.S. should significantly increase the amount of shots administered per day and “get our capacity for doing vaccinations up closer to 3 million doses per day.”

The United States has ordered 100 million doses of the J&J vaccine, which the company plans to deliver by June. J&J plans to file for emergency use authorization next week. If J&J’s vaccine is authorized by the FDA, it would be the third vaccine approved for emergency use in the U.S. Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized by the FDA on Dec. 11, and Moderna’s was authorized a week later.

The J&J vaccine efficacy numbers were lower than those for Pfizer and Moderna. Pfizer’s vaccine was found to be 95% effective against preventing Covid-19, while Moderna’s was found to be about 94% effective. J&J’s vaccine was found to be 66% effective overall in preventing moderate to severe Covid.

Host Shepard Smith asked McClellan about the lower efficacy numbers compared to Pfizer and Moderna, and he explained to Smith that “we’re fighting a different virus today than we were three months ago when previous trials were done.”

Additionally, J&J ran its trial across three continents and the level of protection varied by region. Its vaccine demonstrated overall, 72% effectiveness in the United States and 66% in Latin America. In South Africa, where the dangerous B.1.351 strain of Covid caused a surge in cases, the J&J  vaccine demonstrated 57% effectiveness.

“Unfortunately, we’re probably going to be fighting a different virus three months from now, so most important in winning this battle, is getting as many people vaccinated as possible,” said McClellan. “The faster we get shots in arms, the more people we get vaccinated here in this country and around the world, the better we’re going to do in containing that further spread and the further damage from Covid.”

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Business

Novavax says drug is more than 89% effective

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Biotech firm Novavax said Thursday that its coronavirus vaccine was more than 89% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in its phase three clinical trial conducted in the United Kingdom.

The results were based on 62 confirmed Covid-19 infections among the trial’s 15,000 participants. The company said 56 cases were observed in the placebo group versus six cases observed in the group that received its vaccine. That resulted in an estimated vaccine efficacy of 89.3%, it said.

Shares of the company were up more than 23% in after-hours trading.

With the results, the company “has the potential to play an important role in solving this global public health crisis,” Novavax CEO Stanley Erck said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with our partners, collaborators, investigators and regulators around the world to make the vaccine available as quickly as possible.”

The study also found that the vaccine appeared to be 85.6% effective against the U.K. variant, also known as B.1.1.7. A separate phase two study in South Africa showed that the vaccine isn’t nearly as effective against a new strain ravaging that country.

The shot was still considered effective in protecting against the virus, but at an efficacy rate of just 49.4% among 44 Covid-19 cases in South Africa, where 90% of the cases contain the troubling new variant, the company said.

As a result of the lower effectiveness against the strain in South Africa, Novavax said it plans to pick a modified version of the vaccine to better guard against the new strain “in the coming days.” It plans to test the modified vaccine in the second quarter of this year.

Novavax is among several companies developing a vaccine to fight the virus, which has infected more than 101 million people worldwide and killed at least 2.2 million as of Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Only two vaccines — from Pfizer and Moderna — have been authorized for use in the U.S. so far.

In July, the U.S. government, as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, announced it would pay Novavax $1.6 billion to develop and manufacture the potential vaccine, with the aim of delivering 100 million doses by the beginning of 2021.

It’s unclear if the data Thursday will be enough for Novavax to be given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration that would allow the distribution in the U.S. The company began a late-stage trial with 30,000 people in the U.S. and Mexico in late December.

Novavax’s vaccine contains synthesized pieces of the surface protein the coronavirus uses to infect humans. The company said the vaccine was well tolerated, adding that “severe, serious, and medically attended adverse events occurred at low levels and were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups.”

In August, the company said phase one trial data found its vaccine generated a promising immune response. Participants received two doses of the potential vaccine via intramuscular injection approximately 21 days apart. Novavax also said the vaccine was well tolerated with no serious adverse events reported.

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Business

Merck ends its vaccine development; Google offers its offices for vaccination sites

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CVS completes first round of vaccination at 8,000 U.S. nursing homes

A CVS pharmacy manager prepares a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine dose at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, December 29, 2020.

Hoang ‘Leon’ Nguyen | The Republican | Pool | via Reuters

CVS Health completed administering the first round of Covid-19 vaccination at roughly 8,000 U.S. nursing facilities, Reuters reports.

Administration of second doses was underway and expected to be completed within four weeks.

CVS Pharmacy has administered nearly 2 million doses to date but has a capacity for 20 million to 25 million shots a month, the company told Reuters, adding that its long-term care vaccination effort remains on track.

—Terri Cullen

U.S. doesn’t know how much Covid vaccine it has, says CDC chief

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Sunday that the federal government doesn’t know how much coronavirus vaccine there is available to the country, adding yet another complication to the new administration’s efforts to mitigate the crisis, reports CNBC’s Amanda Macias.

“I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Fox News Sunday.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting not just this week but next week and the week after they can’t plan. They can’t figure out how many sites to roll out, they can’t figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can’t figure out how many appointments to make for the public,” Walensky said.

President Joe Biden has set a goal for the country to administer 100 million vaccines in the president’s first 100 days.

—Fred Imbert

Merck ends its Covid vaccine program, citing inferior immune responses

A Merck sign in front of the company’s building in Summit, New Jersey.

Getty Images

Merck said it will end development of its two Covid-19 vaccines, Reuters reports.

In early trials, two of the company’s vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19, as well as those reported for other Covid-19 vaccines, according to Reuters.

The drugmaker said it plans to focus its pandemic research on treatments, with initial efficacy data on an experimental oral antiviral expected by the end of March, the wire service said.

—Terri Cullen

Google to open vaccine sites at its U.S. offices

American multinational technology company Google logo seen at Googleplex, the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc.

Alex Tai | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

Google will make some of its own facilities available to open new coronavirus vaccination sites in the U.S.

The company said it has partnered with health clinic chain One Medical and public health authorities to open vaccine sites in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Kirkland, Washington; and New York City. The tech giant also plans to open vaccine centers abroad.

Google also committed $100 million in advertising grants to the CDC Foundation, World Health Organization and nonprofits, as well as a $50 million investment aimed at helping public health agencies reach underserved communities with vaccine information.

Google said it will start including Covid-19 vaccination locations in Google Search and Maps in the coming weeks, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The information will include details like whether an appointment or referral is required and if the location has a drive-thru.

—Ryan Browne

Read CNBC’s previous live coverage here:

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Health

Studies of South African Coronavirus Strain Raise Concerns About Immune Response

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JOHANNESBURG—Three new laboratory studies are raising concerns that the immune response triggered by a Covid-19 infection or vaccination may be less effective at protecting against the new strain of the coronavirus that first emerged in South Africa.

The findings come from experiments done in the laboratory and only look at certain elements of a body’s immune response. Still, they reinforce the possibility that vaccine makers and regulators will need to update Covid-19 vaccines as the virus evolves.

A fourth study, conducted by scientists at BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc. and published by the companies, showed that their vaccine successfully neutralized a variant that was initially detected in the U.K. That study didn’t include the South African strain.

The U.K. variant has already spread to many other countries, including the U.S.

More than a year into the pandemic, the discovery of new variants that appear to have made the virus more contagious is forcing researchers to adapt their understanding of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. One concern, researchers said, is that the new strains are emerging in countries where a significant percentage of people have already built up an immune response to earlier variants after getting Covid-19.

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