💊 Bavarian Nordic goes travelling for vaccines; Africa CDC seeks Pandemic Fund inclusion; A new approach to preventing pandemics
#278 | Indian math? Not so good; Baby roo poo? The real dude; Climate change? Not in the Antarctic hood
Hello, and welcome back to The Kable for a fully-packed edition.
Flush with a plenitude of funds from various deals for its smallpox/mpox vaccine, Bavarian Nordic is plonking down $380 million - $270 million upfront - to acquire Emergent Bio's travel vaccines biz along with a chikungunya candidate. Interestingly, none of the funds raised by Bavarian Nordic in selling its vaccine saw doses travelling to Africa, where mpox is still quite the rage. The first batch of mpox vaccines that the entire continent of Africa received in 50+ years was thanks to a donation from South Korea in December last year.
There has been a lot of talk lately that the multi-country emergency status for mpox was likely to be withdrawn by the WHO. Thankfully, the agency has desisted from doing so, instead asking countries to maintain continued vigilance. No word from the WHO on what help Africa is getting, though.
When faced with a patent infringement lawsuit, Moderna's defence was that the claimants should instead sue the US government. And now, the US government seems to agree with this contention. This feels like a smart bit of 4D chess from the US administration because now they can actually compel Moderna not to hike vaccine prices.
In a surprise move, World Bank chief David Malpass is leaving the agency in June this year. Possibly because, and this is just conjecture on our part, he has a climate-denying show lined up on Fox News.
The biopharma layoff trend continues, with Spain's Grifol saying boa noite to more than 2,000 people in the US.
GSK, which has consistently argued that its heartburn drug Zantac does not pose heightened cancer risks, may have been lying. Because a new report says internal scientists and external researchers both warned GSK about the risks with Zantac. Emergence of this news might be causing heartburn at certain levels at GSK HQ.
Unlike reports yesterday, which we also covered, the WHO, has no intention of giving up studying the origins of Covid.
And finally, the laboriously-brokered peace in Ethiopia gave hope that the medical crisis in the country, especially in the embattled Tigray region, might be coming to an end. However, hospitals in Ethiopia are now at a stage where they're sterilising and reusing even surgical gloves.
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