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Johnson & Johnson’s takeover of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing at an error-prone Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore didn’t last long...Two weeks after the U.S. stepped in and handed control of vaccine manufacturing at the plant to J&J, Emergent agreed to temporarily halt producing new drug substance there...READ MORE

The White House said on Monday it was prepared to send additional therapeutic treatments to the state of Michigan, which is experiencing a worrying number of COVID-19 cases, but declined to promise more vaccine as the state has sought...White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt told reporters the U.S. government would work to ensure that states such as Michigan were ordering the full amount of vaccine that was available to them but said that shifting distribution was not in line with the administration’s public health strategy...READ MORE

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will "likely" need a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated..Bourla said it's possible people will need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus annually..."A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role,"...READ MORE

The global pandemic played a key role in an economic downturn with the lockdowns and work interruptions. Despite those woes, the heads of some biopharmaceutical companies developing vaccines that are playing a key role in the battle against COVID-19 saw boosts in their annual compensation...READ MORE

• Albert Bourla, Pfizer $21 million
• Ugur Sahin, BioNTech $7 million
• Stéphane Bancel, Moderna $12 million
• Alex Gorsky, Johnson & Johnson $25 million
• Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca $21 million

The COVID-19 pandemic heavily influenced U.S. spending for prescription drugs in 2020, according to ASHP's National Trends in Prescription Drug Expenditures and Projections for 2021...Shifts in care related to the pandemic will be a significant driver of drug expenditures in 2021, along with uptake in the use of biosimilars, a large pipeline of new cancer drugs and increased approvals of specialty medications...Prescription drug spending in 2020 grew at a moderate rate of 4.9% to $535.3 billion. Increased use drove the growth, which accounted for 2.9% of the total increase, according to the report. Spending on new drugs accounted for 1.8% of the increase, and price changes accounted for 0.3%...READ MORE

Some companies are betting on telehealth's "gold rush," but virtual care may run into limiting factors...It's become somewhat common in the last year to see news about prescription delivery apps expanding, either to offer more kinds of services or to offer telehealth more generally...Part of this activity is in response to customer demand: Companies say users are increasingly accustomed to a one-stop-shop experience, especially online, and they're starting to expect similar seamlessness from health-and-wellness tools...Another part, of course, stems from the spike in telehealth interest triggered by the pandemic...READ MORE

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have identified six cases in the U.S. of a “rare and severe” type of blood clot, which seems to be linked to the COVID-19 vaccine by Johnson & Johnson...That is six cases out of more than 6.8 million doses that have been given in the U.S...The blood clots are cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which were observed in combination with low levels of blood platelets. All cases were in women between 18 and 48 years of age. The symptoms occurred six to 13 days after vaccination...READ MORE

For many, the sedative power of poppies was introduced by Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, galloping through flowers before falling fast asleep...Those blooms now provide raw materials for opioid painkillers used by the millions worldwide. But like the Wicked Witch of the West, who cast that poppy spell on Dorothy, the coronavirus pandemic has put a sleeper hold on the production of poppies for pharmaceutical use...The global demand for opium-based products plummeted last year as COVID forced the cancellation of most elective surgeries, and now, that diminished need for surgical pain relief products has forced Sun Pharma of India to reduce its number of contracted poppy growers in Tasmania and to eliminate two of its field officers...READ MORE

Johnson & Johnson reached out to vaccine rivals—including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer—last week, hoping to join forces to study cases of rare and severe blood clots cropping up in some vaccinated people...The goal: to forge an alliance that would communicate the vaccines' benefits and risks to allay fears among the public...Regulators were already investigating a small number of cases possibly linked to AstraZeneca's vaccine...the FDA and its European counterparts said they were examining four cases in people dosed with the J&J shot...READ MORE