- With less demand for surgical relief during pandemic, Sun cuts poppy production in Tasmania (fiercepharma.com)
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
- Vaccine passports are latest flash point in COVID politics (apnews.com)
Vaccine passports being developed to verify COVID-19 immunization status and allow inoculated people to more freely travel, shop and dine have become the latest flash point in America’s perpetual political wars, with Republicans portraying them as a heavy-handed intrusion into personal freedom and private health choices...They currently exist in only one state — a limited government partnership in New York with a private company — but that hasn’t stopped GOP lawmakers in a handful of states from rushing out legislative proposals to ban their use...READ MORE
- AHA, ASHP seek meeting with FDA to address insurer ‘white bagging’ policies (fiercehealthcare.com)
Hospitals and health system pharmacists are urging the Biden administration to review insurer "white bagging" policies...Payers use white bagging to dispense drugs to hospitals, requiring these medications come from select network specialty pharmacies. AHA and ASHP said in the letter that doing so circumvents hospital supply chain protocols aimed at patient safety..."White bagging has surged in frequency over the past decade, creating what amounts to a shadow inventory that hospitals and health systems do not legally own and which exists largely outside of the DSCSA’s track and trace requirements,"...READ MORE
- Amazon to widen Amazon Care service availability (drugstorenews.com)'Game on': Competition in telehealth, primary care spaces heats up as Amazon Care expands, analysts say (fiercehealthcare.com)Lynch: CVS confident about strategy as Amazon aims to muscle in on its turf (fiercehealthcare.com)
Amazon is taking its health care offerings to new places. The company announced plans to roll out Amazon Care, its on-demand healthcare service across the United States this summer...The move follows the launch 18 months ago of Amazon Care to provide Amazon employees and their families immediate access to high-quality medical care...Amazon Care has two components. The first is virtual care, which connects patients to medical professionals via the Amazon Care app...The second component is in-person care, where Amazon Care can dispatch a medical professional to a patient’s home for additional care...READ MORE
- How specialty prescription apps are expanding into other services (healthcareitnews.com)
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
- Gilead has sole rights to COVID-19 blockbuster Veklury, GAO concludes (fiercepharma.com)
Throughout the frantic response to the pandemic last year, drugmakers worldwide tested hundreds of potential treatments. Gilead’s antiviral remdesivir quickly rose to the top of treatment guidelines, and with the pandemic spiraling out of control, advocacy groups called on the U.S. government to step in and enforce patents against the company...But it turns out the government has no intellectual property covering remdesivir, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report...READ MORE
- On the heels of CFO scandal, former Eli Lilly exec alleges sex discrimination, harassment in bombshell lawsuit (fiercepharma.com)
Eli Lilly faced a high-level personnel scandal last month when CFO Josh Smiley left under a cloud of "inappropriate" communications with employees. But a sex discrimination lawsuit from a former internal lobbyist uncovers an entirely new controversy—and offers an alleged look inside the culture of a key team...Sonya Elling, a longtime biopharma lobbyist who worked in Lilly's government affairs operation, sued the company alleging mistreatment by her supervisors on the basis that she is a female...During Elling's time at the company, her first- and second-level supervisors called her “mean,” “nasty,” “disruptive,” “rude,” “aggressive,” and a “bitch,” according to the suit. They did so because she is a "strong, assertive female," who didn't "conform to traditional gender stereotypes," the suit says...READ MORE
- CEOs of COVID-19 Vaccine Makers See Boost in Salaries (biospace.com)
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
- FDA downplayed serious red flags at Merck vaccine plant slated for J&J COVID shot, whistleblower says (fiercepharma.com)
An FDA inspector-turned-whistleblower claims the agency soft-pedaled violations at a range of pharma manufacturing plants, including a Merck & Co. vaccine facility in Durham, North Carolina, where staff allegedly destroyed evidence of unsanitary practices. Those allegations have now been passed along to the White House… The whistleblower alleged that employees at Merck's plant were moving between cleanrooms and uncontrolled areas without properly ungowning, and that a biohazard bin contained employee uniforms soiled with blood, urine and feces. Employees were soiling their uniforms rather than taking restroom breaks, the whistleblower claimed, citing a confidential informant, because staffers would have otherwise needed to remove sterile gowning and leave manufacturing areas…READ MORE
- FDA warning letters detail violations at China, Mexico drugmakers already under import alert (fiercepharma.com)
Shoddy manufacturing practices triggered FDA warning letters for a pair of foreign producers of over-the-counter drugs...Dibar of Mexico, a CDMO for nutritional and self-care products, and Foshan Biours Biosciences of China, which specializes in gel patches, were cited for failure to fix problems the FDA raised in April of last year...The companies have been barred from importing their products to the U.S. since last fall...READ MORE