As the World Trade Organization (WTO) debate intensified this week over a demand to waive patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, the group’s new director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, urged members to “walk and chew gum” at the same time by working with “companies to open up and license more viable manufacturing sites now in emerging markets and developing countries. We must get them to work with us on know-how and technology transfer now.”

KARACHI, Pakistan – Trypanophobia is a debilitating extreme fear of needles and syringes that prevents both children and adults from receiving sometimes life-saving medical care. The condition can lead patients to resist or deny simple procedures like an intravenous drip or even essential vaccinations. The condition has taken on an added significance in the fight against COVID-19 because of its impact on vaccination campaigns.

Shares of Paris-based Abivax SA (Paris:ABVX) fell 25.4% to €21 (US$25.07) on March 8 after the company said it would halt a phase IIb/III trial of its lead candidate, ABX-464, in high-risk COVID-19 patients for lack of efficacy. The decision was based on a data safety monitoring board analysis that Abivax said revealed a "lower than expected rate (10.1%) of progression to severe disease or death with no difference between ABX-464 and placebo groups," each of which also received standard-of-care therapy.

CAJICA, Colombia – Cuba’s Center for the State Control of Drugs, Equipment and Medical Devices gave the green light March 3 for phase III trials of a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate, even though very little peer-reviewed information has been published about it.

LONDON – The SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern that caused a wave of infection in Manaus, Brazil, in December and January has been found to be both more transmissible and to evade immunity conferred by prior natural infection with the virus. A combined Brazil/U.K. genome sequencing and epidemiological study found the variant, called P.1., is between 1.4 and 2.2 times more transmissible than earlier lineages, and can evade 25% to 61% of the protective immunity elicited by previous infection.

LONDON – A further U.K. real-world study of COVID-19 vaccines has found a single dose dramatically reduces the chances of the most elderly and frail being admitted to the hospital as a result of serious infection.

China’s National Medical Products Administration granted conditional approval two Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccines in less than 24 hours on Feb. 25. One of the vaccines approved was developed by Tianjin-based Cansino Biologics Inc., and the other by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) through its Wuhan Institute of Biological Products subsidiary.

Eight months after Beijing-based Yisheng Biopharma Co. Ltd. unveiled its recombinant protein vaccine candidate for COVID-19, YS-SC2-010, the company raised $130 million in a series B round to pave way for the vaccine to enter clinical trials in the second quarter of this year, the company’s CEO David Shao told BioWorld.