Vaccine Financial News

Pfizer on Wednesday forecast 2024 sales that were as much as $5 billion below Wall Street expectations due mostly to declining demand for COVID vaccines and treatment, driving shares down seven per cent in premarket trading.

Investing.com — U.S. stocks rose Thursday, adding to the previous session’s strong gains after the Federal Reserve signaled interest rate cuts to start next year, helped by a bounce in retail sales.

Investing.com — The Dow closed at record high Wednesday after the Federal Reserve's decision to keep rates unchanged, but forecast deeper rate cuts for next year, pushed growth stocks including tech sharply as Treasury yields slumped.

By Ankika Biswas, Khushi Singh and Bansari Mayur Kamdar

₹1,446 crore. Adar Poonawalla is the CEO of Serum Institute of India (SII), which makes the Covishield vaccine. A CNBC report confirmed the deal wherein Adar Poonawalla will buy the most expensive house in London.

India's bio-economy has grown eight times in the last eight years from USD 10 billion to USD 80 billion, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Monday, underlining that in the coming times, biotechnology will become the biggest foundation for medical treatment. The Indian biotech industry aims at growing to USD 150 billion by 2025 and USD 300 billion by 2030, he noted while virtually addressing an event «Biotechnology: The Path of Innovation and Wellness for Viksit Bharat» held at the at Vigyan Bhavan in Ahmedabad.

Karachi, is currently facing a severe shortage of essential medicines, including life-saving drugs, which has worried patients and citizens in the city, as reported by ARY News. ARY News is a Pakistan news channel.

S Jaishankar said that India has put up with «unfair competition» for too long in the name of the globalisation era. He said that India must have the ability to call it out if the competition is unfair. While speaking at the 96th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on Friday, Jaishankar noted that history is on India's side and every measurable index is working in India's favour.

BRUSSELS/MADRID (Reuters) -EU finance ministers on Friday picked Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Nadia Calvino to become the next head of the European Investment Bank in a boost for Spain's clout within the bloc.

Emcure Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday got a temporary relief from a federal court in Seattle, Washington, against a nearly $950 million lawsuit by US-based HDT Bio accusing it of stealing trade secrets to develop a Covid-19 vaccine based on RNA platform. The US district judge James Robart upheld the Indian drug maker's argument that the court lacked jurisdiction over the company and dismissed the case without prejudice, which means it can be refiled. An Emcure Pharmaceuticals spokesperson told ET that the ruling «vindicates» its stand, and declined to comment further. HDT Bio sued Emcure Pharmaceuticals in March 2020, alleging the latter had misappropriated its trade secrets in violation of the Defense of Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act. On May 13, 2020, Emcure Pharmaceuticals moved the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over it. Emcure Pharmaceuticals' subsidiary Gennova Biopharmaceuticals had developed mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, which was approved by the Indian regulator for emergency use. Gennova Biopharmaceuticals said its mRNA vaccine can be freeze dried and can be stored at higher temperatures which can solve logistics and pricing issues associated with mRNA vaccine. This major improvement in mRNA technology is called self-amplifying RNA (saRNA). But HDT Bio, with which Emcure Pharmaceuticals collaborated for formulation and adjuvant (which boosts the efficacy of the vaccine), alleged the latter had stolen trade secrets related to technology improvement over existing mRNA vaccines at the time.

In a submission to the World Trade Organization, they said that diagnostics and therapeutics are «essential tools for a comprehensive approach to fight the pandemic, that it is not over». The submission, made on behalf of 65 WTO members on Monday, came after the US refrained from taking sides in extending the waiver, which is applicable to Covid-19 vaccines only. For almost two years, India, South Africa and 80 other WTO members have sought a response for future pandemics through exceptions in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement but the ministerial outcome of 2022 (MC12) only covered Covid-19 vaccines, with the US delaying an outcome on therapeutics and diagnostics. «The MC12 Decision on the TRIPS agreement is extended mutatis mutandis for the production and supply of Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics,» India and others said in the draft decision text on Monday. They asked the WTO to promptly respond to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the challenge of inequitable access to therapeutics and diagnostics, and «respond to the criticism that the decision on vaccines came too little too late». Extension of the policy tools to therapeutics and diagnostics will result in a holistic approach to enable developing countries to address those intellectual property (IP) barriers that prevent the expansion and diversification of production and increase accessibility to crucial life-saving Covid-19 tools, they said. As per the draft text, «omitting these vital tools» will deter the effectiveness of the decision that aims timely and affordable access to effective vaccines against the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The submission assumes significance as last week, the UK, the EU, the US,

By Patrick Wingrove and Bhanvi Satija

for medicine, awarded on October 2nd to Katalin Karikó, a biochemist, and Drew Weissman, an immunologist, is a fitting capstone to a great underdog story. Dr Karikó’s unfashionable insistence on trying to get RNA into cells set back her career. She persisted, and the two developed a technique which allowed the immune system to be primed against threats in an entirely new way.

Jaishankar said on Monday. Addressing an event, Jaishankar said that society in the country is «deeply democratised today» and a lot of its leadership and its thought processes are being driven by people and forces that are deeply Indian, grounded and rooted in India.

State agriculture officials have confirmed a new case of cattle anthrax in southwest North Dakota, bringing the number of cases in the state to 25 this year

Malhotra has alleged that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has completely lost its independence and suggested that the Indian government should ignore its advice on various issues and exit the global health body. Talking to PTI, Malhotra, who gave a lecture at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here on «The Corporate Capture of Medicine and Public Health» recently, also claimed that regulators do not independently evaluate data related to drugs. «Drug regulators, such as the FDA, who are supposed to evaluate drugs, receive 65 per cent of their funding from big pharma.

The spike in illness in the country where COVID emerged in late 2019 attracted the spotlight when the World Health Organization sought information last week, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children. Chinese authorities will open more paediatric outpatient clinics, seek to ensure more elderly people and children receive flu vaccines and encourage people to wear masks and wash their hands, Mi Feng, an official with China's National Health Commission, told a press conference. Doctors in China and experts abroad have not expressed alarm about China's outbreaks, given that many other countries saw similar increases in respiratory diseases after easing pandemic measures, which China did at the end of last year.

Iceland has categorically denied news that is floating with claims on social media that the country had banned COVID-19 vaccines amid soaring deaths. The health authority said that there was no ban on Covid shots and there were “no soaring sudden deaths”.

By Yoruk Bahceli, Dhara Ranasinghe and Naomi Rovnick

This initiative follows a summer surge in COVID-19 cases that sparked debates about masking in classrooms, leading to varied policies across different districts. Although there has been a slight decrease in COVID-19-related hospitalizations in recent months, there has been an uptick in the last few weeks, as indicated by the latest federal data. This announcement highlights the enduring impact of the coronavirus on American schools and society. It reflects the evolution from the challenges faced during the height of the pandemic, with limited testing availability, to the current efforts to ensure resources for testing are more widely accessible as schools navigate ways to stay open while prioritizing student safety. Novavax's updated vaccine has been granted emergency-use authorization by the World Health Organization (WHO) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged 12 and older, the company said on Tuesday. The updated Novavax shot, which was authorized in the U.S. last month, targets a descendant of the XBB lineage of the coronavirus that was globally predominant earlier this year. The emergency use listing helps speed up the regulatory approvals to import and administer the vaccines by member states, according to the WHO. Novavax missed out on the COVID-19 vaccine windfall, which benefited mRNA rivals, due to manufacturing issues that delayed its filing for regulatory approval during the peak of the pandemic. Its original COVID shot received U.S. authorization in July 2022, long after Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were in use. Novavax's updated shot uses a more traditional protein-based technology than the mRNA-based vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna.

During the covid years, Americans’ trust in scientists fell, according to a Pew poll. In 2019, only 13% of Americans were distrustful enough to say they weren’t confident in scientists to act in the public’s best interest. Now that figure is 27%—despite recent triumphs in astronomy, cancer research, genetics and more.