Pfizer Will More than Double Its Vaccine Output

One month into the Biden Administration and we are almost half way to getting the 100 million vaccinations the President promised for his first 100 days. Vaccinations have slowed considerable in the last week due to extreme winter weather, but 42.8 million Americans have received at least one dose, 13% of the US population (16.5% of those old enough to be eligible). Since the weather probably had little effect on production of the vaccine, we can look forward to making up for lost time in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, there is mostly good news with Pfizer and Moderna expecting to increase their production and Johnson and Johnson expecting to get approval for its vaccine after a meeting of advisors to the FDA on February 26.

www.msn.com/…Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, announced that he expects to more than double the approximately 5 million doses per week that the company provides to the US government. Per Reuters, he made the comments when the president visited one of its biggest manufacturing facilities.

Pfizer is also looking at changing the requirements that its vaccine be kept at ultracold temperatures. This would facilitate its transportation and storage and reduce the likelihood of wastage.

www.yahoo.com/…The companies have submitted new temperature data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to support an update to the current label that would allow vaccine vials to be stored at -25 to -15 degrees Celsius (-13°F to 5°F) for a total of two weeks.

The current label requires the vaccine to be stored in an ultra-cold freezer at temperatures between -80ºC and -60ºC (-112ºF to -76ºF), meaning it has to be shipped in specially designed containers.

And there is continuing strong evidence that even one shot of the vaccines work well against Covid-19 virus and the British variant. The evidence with the South African strain is less promising.

www.yahoo.com/…

Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine may be more effective after just one shot than researchers had previously realized, and can be stored for two weeks at standard temperatures typically found in pharmaceutical freezers and refrigerators, according to new data.

Why it matters: The findings about first-dose efficacy, which appear in a new analysis published in The Lancet, appear to support a strategy of delaying second shots in order to make the most of limited supplies. That’s what the U.K. has done, and some experts have called for a similar approach in the U.S.

news.yahoo.com/…More good news came out of Israel on Saturday when the country’s health ministry released another round of data on the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, further affirming its effectiveness.

The latest numbers, which were compiled through Feb. 13 and compare the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, show that the jab has been nearly 96 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections two weeks after individuals receive their second dose. When it comes to preventing severe infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from the coronavirus, the figure jumps to an efficacy rate around 99 percent.

And there is this interesting tidbit.

www.msn.com/…Three genes inherited from Neanderthals slash the risk of severe Covid-19 by 22 per cent, a new study has revealed.