Tag Archives: third dose

Factbox-Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) – Drugmakers Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are expected to make billions of dollars from COVID-19 booster shots in a market that could for years rival the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines, analysts and healthcare investors say.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

EUROPE

* The German government has designated the Israel, Turkey and the United States as high-risk countries, triggering a minimum five-day quarantine requirement for those who are unvaccinated, the Funke media group reported.

* Russia reported a record 815 coronavirus-related deaths in the last 24 hours, but Moscow’s mayor said hospitalizations from the disease in the capital had halved over the last six weeks.

* Norway’s government will end some restrictions related to the pandemic, it said, but stopped short of announcing a full reopening of the economy.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* Indonesia’s capital reopened its retail malls this week to an exclusive crowd – shoppers vaccinated against coronavirus.

* China reported declining numbers of new locally transmitted cases for the third consecutive day. However, ports and shipping companies are diverting vessels from a container terminal in the country’s busiest marine transportation hub, which was forced to close after a case emerged.

* Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga urged people to refrain from travelling as COVID-19 cases spiked to records in Tokyo and nationwide, heaping pressure on the medical system.

* South Korea signed a deal to buy 30 million doses of Pfizer vaccine for 2022, and the government urged people to cut holiday travel amid a worsening fourth wave of infections and a slow inoculation campaign.

AMERICAS

* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a third dose of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for people with compromised immune systems.

* The United States has started shipping nearly 569,000 Pfizer vaccine doses to member countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the U.S. State Department said.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Morocco received a shipment of 600,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as it expands its inoculation campaign to younger people following a surge in cases, said Said Afif, a member of the health ministry’s scientific committee.

* South Africa’s health minister Joe Phaahla said authorities would not would recommend a relaxation of lockdown measures from its current Level 3, despite an overall downward trend in infections as the country grapples with a third wave.

* Israel lowered to 50 from 60 the minimum age of eligibility for a vaccine booster shot and will also offer it to health workers, hoping to stem a surge in Delta variant infections.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* The World Health Organization said it was setting up a new group to trace the origins of the coronavirus, seeking to end what it called “political point scoring” that had hampered investigations.

* Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech’s nasal vaccine candidate has received regulatory approval for mid- to late-stage trials, the government’s ministry of science and technology said in a statement.

* A two-dose vaccine from China’s Sinopharm was 50.4% effective in preventing infections in health workers in Peru when it saw a surge in cases fueled by virus variants, and booster shots can be considered, a study found.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Global stock markets hit record highs on Friday, capping another bumper week as investors seized on a dip in U.S. inflation and more forecast-beating corporate earnings.

(Compiled by Veronica Snoj and Federico Maccioni; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Barbara Lewis)

BioNTech says vaccine repeats beat devising new one for now

By Ludwig Burger

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -BioNTech said that repeat shots of its COVID-19 vaccine, of which more than a billion doses have now been supplied worldwide, was a better strategy than tailoring the product it developed with Pfizer to new variants.

The German biotech firm said that offering a third dose of its established two-shot vaccine remained the best response to concerns over waning immune protection in the face of the highly contagious Delta variant, as worse strains may emerge.

BioNTech said the more than one billion supply tally as per July 21 was up from 700 million-plus doses it announced in June.

This compares with AstraZeneca saying last month that it and manufacturing partner Serum Institute of India had supplied a billion doses of its vaccine globally.

Based on delivery contracts signed for more than 2.2 billion doses so far, BioNTech said in a statement detailing its second quarter earnings that it expects to accrue 15.9 billion euros ($18.7 billion) in revenue from the vaccine this year, up from a May forecast of 12.4 billion euros.

That includes sales, milestone payments and a share of gross profit in its partners’ territories, BioNTech added.

Pfizer late last month raised its forecast for its share of 2021 vaccine sales to $33.5 billion and said at the time it believes people will need a third dose of the shot.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s decision in early July to seek authorization for a third dose drew criticism from U.S. health regulators, who said there was not yet enough data to show booster shots are needed.

U.S. health agencies have since discussed additional doses for people with compromised immune systems, while Germany and France said they would roll out a third dose for the most vulnerable from September.

That jars with a call by the World Health Organization to use doses instead to jump-start vaccination campaigns in poorer nations which have so far been left behind.

BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said that although work was ongoing to adjust the vaccine to variants it was not clear whether yet another version of the pathogen would supplant the now prevalent Delta variant.

“Making a decision at the moment might turn out to be wrong in three or six months if another variant is dominating,” Sahin said during an analyst call.

Chief Medical Officer Oezlem Tuereci said lab experiments had shown that a third shot of the established product generated neutralizing antibodies against a range of strains and that the antibody boost was above the one following a second dose.

Still, the company reiterated plans to start testing a vaccine adjusted to the Delta variant on humans this month, part of a “comprehensive strategy to address variants.”

($1 = 0.8509 euros)

(Reporting by Ludwig BurgerEditing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alexander Smith)