About 900,000 kids aged five to 11 received their first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 in the week since its approval, the White House announced. An additional 700,000 more have scheduled appointments at pharmacies. (CNBC Weekly)
A dispute between Moderna and the National Institutes of Health over the patent to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine will head to court, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said Wednesday. Moderna did not include NIH scientists as co-inventors on its patent application. (Reuters)
Inventprise will receive some $90 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop its pneumococcal conjugate vaccine candidate. The money will go towards Phase I and II trials for the vaccine. (Endpoints News)
Kaleo, a company that sold opioid overdose antidotes to doctors during the opioid epidemic, agreed to pay $12.7 million to settle fraud allegations. The federal government claimed the company used fraudulent tactics to convince doctors to prescribe the antidote. (STAT)
As COVID-19 cases continued to surge in Eastern Europe, experts cited government mistrust and vaccine hesitancy as drivers of low vaccination rates. Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest vaccination rates in the EU, at 23 and 24%, respectively. (Politico)
