WHO validates another shot; Ashish Jha chimes in on the state of vaccines and therapeutics – Endpoints News

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion is giv­ing its OK for an 11th Covid-19 vac­cine, grant­i­ng an emer­gency use list­ing (EUL) for the CanSi­no Bi­o­log­ics vac­cine called Con­vide­cia.

The vac­cine is a mod­i­fied hu­man ade­n­ovirus that ex­press­es the spike S pro­tein of SARS-CoV-2 ad­min­is­tered in a sin­gle dose and used in pa­tients ages 18 and above. Ac­cord­ing to the WHO, the vac­cine was found to have 64% ef­fi­ca­cy against symp­to­matic dis­ease and 92% against se­vere Covid-19.

Agency of­fi­cials said the vac­cine was al­so re­viewed ear­li­er this month by its Strate­gic Ad­vi­so­ry Group of Ex­perts on Im­mu­niza­tion (SAGE), which for­mu­lates vac­cine-spe­cif­ic poli­cies and rec­om­men­da­tions for vac­cines’ use in pop­u­la­tions.

Sev­er­al na­tions in­clud­ing Mex­i­co, Hun­gary, Malaysia, In­done­sia and Pak­istan have pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved the CanSi­no shot for emer­gency use. Ac­cord­ing to the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post, CanSi­no’s vac­cine was ap­proved for use as a mixed boost­er shot for Chi­na in Feb­ru­ary.

The vac­cine will now be added to what the WHO calls “a grow­ing port­fo­lio of vac­cines val­i­dat­ed by WHO for the pre­ven­tion of Covid-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2,” per a state­ment from the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

This comes a week af­ter the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, through the NIH, de­cid­ed to of­fi­cial­ly li­cense 11 Covid-19 re­search tools and ear­ly-stage vac­cine and di­ag­nos­tic can­di­dates in co­or­di­na­tion with a UN-backed pro­gram, the Med­i­cines Patent Pool (MPP). This move was wide­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed to help get vac­cine re­search and tools in­to the hands of mid­dle- and low­er-in­come na­tions.

In 2020, when the pan­dem­ic was well un­der­way and dozens of com­pa­nies were look­ing for a sil­ver bul­let to mit­i­gate the glob­al sit­u­a­tion, CanSi­no post­ed its first re­sults for the vac­cine be­fore Mod­er­na. The com­pa­ny even­tu­al­ly grabbed over $700 mil­lion when it launched its IPO lat­er that year.

Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials pro­vide up­dates on vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics

As the gov­ern­ment gives am­bigu­ous an­swers on whether Paxlovid is reach­ing its in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tions, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is press­ing on with new coro­n­avirus brief­in­gs.

In a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, White House Covid-19 re­sponse co­or­di­na­tor Ashish Jha re­vealed a greater in­crease in the use of Paxlovid late­ly, with the lat­est es­ti­mates peg­ging about 20,000 pre­scrip­tions be­ing giv­en out every day. Jha states that vac­ci­na­tions, boost­er and Paxlovid us­age are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in keep­ing peo­ple out of dan­ger from hos­pi­tal­iza­tion.

Jha al­so said that the ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues de­vel­op­ing new vac­cines, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial­ly bi­va­lent vac­cines, and that the FDA is go­ing to be look­ing at the da­ta. No time­frame was giv­en, how­ev­er. “Our ex­pec­ta­tion is that we’ll prob­a­bly get a new gen­er­a­tion of vac­cines, or cer­tain­ly we need to plan for that,” he said.

On the top­ic of bi­va­lent vac­cines, Jha said they take about three months to man­u­fac­ture. He has had some very pre­lim­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions with man­u­fac­tur­ers.

He al­so ex­pressed that he want­ed to make sure there are enough re­sources for the gov­ern­ment to buy enough vac­cines for every Amer­i­can who wants one. How­ev­er, they do not have the re­sources to do that right now with­out ad­di­tion­al fund­ing from Con­gress. “We will not be able to buy enough vac­cines for every Amer­i­can who wants one once these new gen­er­a­tion of vac­cines come out in the fall and win­ter,” he said.

Jha al­so an­tic­i­pates that the ad­min­is­tra­tion may run out of treat­ments in the fall or win­ter at some point. The ad­min­is­tra­tion is call­ing on Con­gress for more fund­ing, $22.5 bil­lion specif­i­cal­ly, and oth­er re­sources. Jha re­mains con­fi­dent that Con­gress will pull through with fund­ing.

As far as vac­cines for chil­dren un­der 5 are con­cerned, Jha said the FDA is still look­ing at the da­ta. Of­fi­cials will de­cide as soon as they are able, but again, no timetable was giv­en. “They’re not go­ing to de­lay, that they’re not wait­ing for any­thing else, that as soon as the analy­sis is done, they’re go­ing to de­cide.  And that’s my ex­pec­ta­tion,” he said.

As­traZeneca’s US vac­cine roll­out ap­pears dead in the wa­ter

The As­traZeneca Covid vac­cine looks to be dead in the US af­ter the gov­ern­ment can­celed its con­tract.

Ac­cord­ing to STAT News, the Biden Ad­min­is­tra­tion can­celed its con­tract with the phar­ma com­pa­ny in De­cem­ber. As­traZeneca told STAT that its con­tract for 300 mil­lion dos­es was struc­tured so pay­ments would be sent up­on de­liv­ery. The gov­ern­ment on­ly end­ed up pay­ing for 70 mil­lion dos­es.

The White House had hoped to do­nate tens of mil­lions of those As­traZeneca dos­es to oth­er coun­tries, but ac­cord­ing to a re­lease by the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee, at least 105 mil­lion As­traZeneca dos­es were de­stroyed fol­low­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing is­sues at an Emer­gent Bioso­lu­tions plant, ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the US House se­lect sub­com­mit­tee on the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. That de­ba­cle saw, in to­tal, near­ly 400 mil­lion dos­es of Covid-19 vac­cines de­stroyed af­ter fail­ures to meet qual­i­ty stan­dards at Emer­gent’s plant in Mary­land.