Executive Summary
The Kenya Association of Pharmaceutical Industry (KAPI) is a membership organization, established in the late 1960s, representing biopharmaceutical manufacturers (or their local representatives) that through research invent and develop medicines and technologies (e.g., Biopharmaceuticals, Vaccine Healthcare, Medical devices, Diagnostics) that significantly improve people’s lives. KAPI represents the industry voice and promotes efficiency in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that medical products and healthcare technologies of the highest quality can be readily available for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases.
Weekly Brief:
This is a roundup of news allied to the biopharmaceutical industry with a bearing on our mission to improve access to lifesaving health products and technologies for positive health outcomes.
- Pfizer and BioNTech initiate new study to test a third dose of their vaccine against the emerging variant of COVID-19 virus. (Business Insider)
- CureVac chief Franz-Werner Haas said on Thursday that preliminary trials on animals of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate show it is effective against the UK and South African variants. (Reuters)
- The African Union is backing calls for drugmakers to waive some intellectual property rights on COVID-19 medicines and vaccines to speed up their rollout to poor countries, the head of its disease control body said on Thursday. (Reuters)
- Merck & Co said on Thursday that U.S. regulators have asked for additional data beyond the Phase III study already conducted in order to support potential emergency use authorization of its experimental COVID-19 drug MK-7110. (Reuters)
- MSF calls on J&J to send its first shipments to COVAX for LMICs post-approval, rather than high-income countries. (MSF)
- Moderna on Wednesday said it’s now on track to produce 700 million vaccine doses this year, and it’s still aiming for 1 billion at the high end. And for 2022, the biotech is planning for 1.4 billion doses—or perhaps even 2 billion, depending on the dose required for booster shots targeting new variants. (Fierce Pharma)
- The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the largest to date assessing the effectiveness of the vaccine, comparing all illness, severe illness, and hospitalizations as well as deaths between 600,000 pairs of vaccinated and unvaccinated people. (STAT News)
- AstraZeneca has said it will be able to meet a target to deliver 180 million COVID-19 vaccines to the EU in the second quarter, by topping up the supply from its global production network. (Pharmaphorum)
- While WTO members were unable to reach a decision on the proposal, delegations stressed the common goal of providing timely and secure access to high-quality and affordable vaccines and medicines for all. (WTO)
- A flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India landed in Ghana’s capital Accra, making it the first country to receive COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX Facility. (UNICEF)
- The campaign will feature a series of pledging moments and global events to unite world leaders, artists, philanthropists and CEOs to achieve the campaign’s goals: Ending COVID-19 for All, End the Hunger Crisis, Resume Learning Everywhere, Protect the Planet, Advance Equity for All. (Global Citizen)
- Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are restarting clinical development of their COVID-19 vaccine, which was delayed after hitting a snag late last year. In December interim phase 1/2 trial results showed the vaccine produced a lower immune response in older adults. (Pharmaphorum)
- WHO has released a no-fault compensation plan for claims of serious side effects in people in 92 poorer countries due to get COVID-19 vaccines delivered via the COVAX sharing scheme. (WHO)
- AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine is more effective when its second dose is given three months after the first, instead of six weeks, a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet medical journal showed on Friday. (Reuters)