A woman receives a shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a temporary inoculation center at the Tate Modern in central London on July 16, 2021. (TOLGA AKMEN / AFP)
WASHINGTON / PRAGUE / LOS ANGELES / FRANKFURT – A European health emergency official on Wednesday said adapted versions of established mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that address two variants in one shot will soon offer people better protection than vaccines that are now available.
The European Medicines Agency has not yet expressed a clear preference for the subvariant – BA.1 or BA.4/BA.5 – that these shots should be based on
Moderna and the BioNTech-Pfizer alliance are working on vaccines based on a combination of the original COVID-19 and an Omicron subvariant. Referred to as bivalent shots, these would be used in an autumn vaccination campaign.
"Whatever bivalent vaccine will be available will be a good one. It will be better than the current vaccines," the director of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, Pierre Delsaux, told members of the European Parliament in a hearing.
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He did not take a side in the ongoing discussion among European regulators and vaccine makers over what subtype of the Omicron such adapted shots should be modelled on.
The European Medicines Agency has not yet expressed a clear preference for the subvariant – BA.1 or BA.4/BA.5 – that these shots should be based on.
BioNTech and Pfizer have also proposed a shot based on one Omicron subvariant only.
A healthcare professional prepares a dose of COVID-19 vaccine for health and social care workers at the Life Science Centre at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, northeast England, on Jan 9, 2021. (OWEN HUMPHREYS / POOL / AFP)
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc escalated its patent fight with Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc over their COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday, accusing the companies in Delaware federal court of infringing a newly obtained patent.
The lawsuits said the vaccines' messenger-RNA delivery systems violate an Alnylam patent on lipid nanoparticle technology for delivering genetic material into human cells. The US Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent the same day Alnylam filed the complaints.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam first sued Pfizer and Moderna in March for allegedly infringing an LNP patent
Pfizer, its German vaccine partner and co-defendant BioNTech SE, and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Alnylam and its attorneys also did not respond to requests for comment.
ALSO READ: Moderna to advance two Omicron vaccine candidates
Several biotech companies have filed patent lawsuits this year over the LNP technology in Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam first sued Pfizer and Moderna in March for allegedly infringing an LNP patent. Alnylam has said in all of the lawsuits that its technology is "essential" to the vaccines.
Pfizer denied those allegations in May and responded that Alnylam knows the vaccine is "outside the scope of what Alnylam actually invented." Moderna told the court it was immune from Alnylam's claims because it provided the shots for the US government's national vaccination program.
ALSO READ: Hit by COVID-19, EU population shrinks for second year running
Alnylam's Tuesday lawsuits accused New York-based Pfizer and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna of infringing a patent covering a specific class of LNPs and a method for manufacturing them.
The new lawsuits, like Alnylam's other lawsuits, ask for an unspecified share from vaccine sales. Pfizer has said that it expects $32 billion in revenue from its vaccine this year, while Moderna forecast $21 billion from its shots.
AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca said on Wednesday a review of real-world data showed its COVID-19 vaccine provided equally effective protection after two doses as with current mRNA shots from Pfizer and Moderna.
A woman wearing a face mask walks to get tested for COVID-19 at a sampling station in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept 18, 2020. (PETR DAVID JOSEK / AP)
Czech Republic
The number of daily COVID-19 cases in the Czech Republic exceeded 2,000 for the first time since late April, data from the country's Health Ministry showed Tuesday.
The country recorded 2,031 new cases on Monday, a one-third increase week-on-week. The daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations also continued to rise, reaching 305 on Monday compared to 286 a week ago.
The number of daily infections in the country started to rise at the end of June. More than 1,000 daily cases were recorded for five consecutive working days in the last week of June.
A boy gets tested for COVID-19 after vaccinated family members tested positive for the coronavirus, in North Miami, Florida on Aug 9, 2021. (MARTA LAVANDIER / AP)
US
Nearly 68,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported across the United States in the week ending July 7, according to a report released on Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association.
Over 13.8 million children had tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic in the country, and nearly 295,000 of these cases had been added in the past four weeks, according to the report.
Over 5.9 million child COVID-19 cases had been added in 2022, said the report.