Moderna has entered into a long-term agreement with the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to supply Covid-19 vaccines on behalf of the COVAX facility. Under the agreement, UNICEF and its partners, including the Pan American Health Organisation, will have access to approximately 34 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine to be delivered at the end of 2021 and about 466 million doses in 2022.
Biotechnology company Centivax has partnered with the US Naval Medical Research Centre for a Phase I clinical development of the company’s Covid-19 broad-spectrum injectable antibody therapeutic and prophylactic, the Centi-B9. Centi-B9 has been designed to neutralise mutated coronavirus variants with confirmed broad-spectrum reactivity against 99.5% of all coronavirus variants found in the USA, and over 98% of coronavirus variants globally, including mutations found in the Brazilian P.1 variant, California B.1.429, New York B.1.526, South African B.1.351 and UK B.1.1.7.
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Israel’s health ministry has reported a link between the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and a number of myocarditis cases in the country. The majority of the cases were found to have occurred in men aged between 16 and 30 years. Myocarditis is a condition characterised by an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be caused due to a viral infection or reaction to a medication. Pfizer said in a statement that it was aware of the observations made by the Israeli health ministry, but that no causal link between its vaccine and the cases of myocarditis had been established.
