The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the University of Oxford have entered into a strategic partnership to accelerate the development of safe, effective and globally accessible vaccines against ‘disease X,’ the threat of unknown pathogens with the potential to cause pandemics.
The COVID-19 pandemic might be officially over, but future variants could still pose a threat, and serious health consequences of the causative virus continue to arise, a fact that has prompted the U.S. government to offer Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. about $326 million to develop and manufacture a next-generation COVID-19 monoclonal antibody therapy.
Building on capabilities developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.K. Health Security Agency’s Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre hit the ground running.
The need to reauthorize the U.S. Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) prompted a June 13 hearing in the House of Representatives, but a major fissure appeared between the Republican and Democratic Parties regarding FDA’s authorities for managing drug shortages.
Even though COVID-19 is transitioning from pandemic to endemic across the world, it will remain first in mind as U.S. lawmakers look to reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) this year to ensure the country is better prepared for future threats. With a Sept. 30 deadline for reauthorizing PAHPA, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has its work cut out for it. But it won’t be starting from scratch. In opening a May 4 hearing on the reauthorization, HELP Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the committee would build on the efforts started last year under then-Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and now-retired Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
With the COVID-19 public health emergency ending in the U.S. next week, Congress is looking to use the lessons learned from the pandemic to draft a new iteration of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act to ensure the country is better prepared for the next pandemic.
The Biden administration released a blueprint for the U.S. federal government’s fiscal 2024 budget year on March 9, which includes additional funding for pandemic preparedness. However, the White House has signaled its intent to drill down on drug prices with an increase in the scope of the number of drugs subject to Medicare price negotiations along with a 67% increase in the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Health (ARPA-H) to $2.5 billion, a boost that is sure to draw cheers from companies in the life sciences.
The Biden administration has determined that the public health emergency (PHE) for the COVID-19 pandemic will not be renewed and thus will come to an end in the second week of May. While the end of the PHE will affect some Medicare telehealth provisions that have not been memorialized in legislation, the U.S. FDA’s ability to issue emergency use authorizations (EUAs) will not be immediately affected as that authority was invoked by a separate mechanism.
The White House laid out several timelines Oct. 18 as part of a national biodefense strategy for countering biological threats and enhancing global pandemic preparedness.
President Joseph Biden’s recent statement that the COVID-19 pandemic is over may or may not reflect popular fatigue with the associated public health emergency (PHE), but the statement struck a different tone in some quarters on Capitol Hill. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) was one of several who argued that the need for the PHE had thus necessarily run its course, with Burr specifically calling into question the need for additional funding for COVID-related federal health efforts.