Bill Gates Reveals Plan to Change Vaccines + More
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Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gatesrecently spoke about new plans to change the way vaccines are administered, created and distributed around the globe. While appearing on CNBC TV18 in India, Gates was asked how he sees vaccine manufacturing around the globe amid different tech and healthcare advancements.
“We make sure, for all these vaccines, that there’s enough capacity, that there’s competition so the prices keep going down,” Gates said. “And we will have new vaccines. We’ll have a TB [tuberculosis] vaccine, malariavaccine, HIV vaccine.” As Gates continued, he spoke about the COVID-19 vaccine and explained ways it could change. “We need to make them have longer duration, more coverage,” he said. “And we’re gonna change, instead of using a needle, to use a little patch.”
Gates’ comments came shortly after he spoke at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend more than $8 billion to help develop new technology in healthcare, according to Bloomberg.
“GREAT! Vaccines for everything,” actor Russel Brand wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Bill Gates and the WEF’s global takeover is HERE.”
X user Concerned Citizen wrote: “Eugenicist Bill Gates wants as many of his vaccines in as many people as possible. Good news though — it will no longer necessarily be an injection — you can now take his Gene Therapy through simple applied patches — I’m sure the children will be extremely happy about not needing to be stabbed in order to develop autism & whatever side effects may come on the label.”
Congressional Watchdog Will Launch Inquiry Into FDA Oversight of Medical Device Recalls
Congressional investigators are launching an inquiry into the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of medical device recalls for the first time in years following reports that the agency failed to issue warnings about breathing machines capable of sending hazardous particles and fumes into the lungs of patients.
U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., urged the Government Accountability Office to investigate, citing reports by ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that detailed the role of the FDA in an ongoing health crisis that has threatened millions of people in the United States and around the world.
The news organizations revealed that the agency had received hundreds of complaints about breathing machines manufactured by Philips Respironics long before the company announced a massive recall in 2021, but took no action to alert patients or doctors.
Philips withheld thousands of additional complaints over the course of 11 years while customers who relied on the machines to breathe reported respiratory problems, kidney and liver conditions, and cancer, the news organizations found.
United States of Ozempic: Where Anti-Obesity Drugs Are Taking Off
For every 1,000 people in Kentucky, roughly 21 were prescribed a drug that belongs to a buzzy class of diabetes and anti-obesity medicationslast year — the highest rate of any state, according to insurance claims data provided to Axios by health analytics company PurpleLab.
The big picture: It’s among a few Southern states, including Louisiana and Mississippi, that had some of the highest prescribing rates for drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Why it matters: The data offers a snapshot of where drugs known as GLP-1 agonists, seen as game-changers in the fight against in obesity, are most in demand in the United States.
The states with the highest prescribing rates are also among those with greater prevalence of diabetes and obesity, per CDC data, a rough indication that the medicines may be getting to areas where they are in greatest need while shortages, high price tags and insurance restrictions have limited their use.
Details: After Kentucky, West Virginia had the next highest prescribing rate, at 18.9 prescriptions dispensed per 1,000. That was followed by Alaska (17.5 per 1,000), Mississippi (16.1) and Louisiana (15.4).
The Weight Loss Drug Market May Soon Get More Crowded. Here Are the Companies Trying to Enter the Booming Space
Drugmakers have been scrambling to join a two-horse race to lead the market for popular weight loss drugs, which could be worth tens of billions in less than a decade.
Demand is only expected to grow, leaving room in the segment for lesser-known weight loss drug hopefuls such as the privately held German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim and smaller public companies such as Terns Pharmaceuticals, Viking Therapeutics and Structure Therapeutics.
The next entrants into the booming market have a key window of opportunity in the coming years: Goldman Sachs analysts expect 15 million U.S. adults to be on obesity medications by 2030.
Other large drugmakers such as Pfizer — which has a widely followed but so far ill-fatedweight loss drug program — Amgen, Rocheand AstraZeneca also outlined their strategies for joining the market.
More Patients Are Getting Their Meds Online. Big Pharma Wants in on the Action
Since the pandemic, patients have become increasingly comfortable with getting their medications online. Direct-to-consumer telehealth has made it easy to schedule a virtual visit and get a script, sometimes within minutes, with prescriptions shipped to your doorstep.
Now, Big Pharma is ready to get in on the action.
In early January, Eli Lilly announced a platform that allows patients to access and fill prescriptions for its drugs online, timing the news to the availability of its obesitymedication Zepbound.
Using LillyDirect, patients click into a pipeline for their condition — obesity, diabetes, or migraine — and are routed to telehealth sites that can prescribe them one of Lilly’s drugs if they’re eligible. An integration with online pharmacy Truepill will deliver the meds.
A Cholera Outbreak in Zambia Has Caused More Than 400 Deaths and Infected 10,000
Zambia is reeling from a major choleraoutbreak that has killed more than 400 people and infected more than 10,000, leading authorities to order schools across the country to remain shut after the end-of-year holidays. A large soccer stadium in the capital city has been converted into a treatment facility.
The Zambian government is embarking on a mass vaccination program and says it’s providing clean water — 2.4 million liters a day — to communities that are affected across the southern African nation.
The outbreak in Zambia began in October and 412 people have died and 10,413 cases have been recorded, according to the latest count on Wednesday from the Zambia Public Health Institute, the government body that deals with health emergencies.
The Health Ministry says cholera has been detected in nearly half of the country’s districts and nine out of 10 provinces, and the nation of about 20 million people has been recording more than 400 cases a day.
The WHO and Drug Regulators Want to Reformulate the Flu Vaccine. It’s Easier Said Than Done
Last fall, the World Health Organization and some national drug regulators urged influenza vaccine manufacturers to drop the component known as B/Yamagata from flu vaccines as quickly as possible, citing the fact that this lineage of flu B viruses appears to have been snuffed out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It might seem like that request would be as simple as deciding to leave blueberries out of a mixed-fruit smoothie. It turns out it is not.
“There’s a bit of a perception that, ‘Industry, you change the components of the vaccine twice a year. Why is this so complicated?’” said Paula Barbosa, the IFPMA’s associate director for vaccine policy. “It’s widely different.”
Dozens of manufacturers around the world make hundreds of millions of doses of flu vaccine every year. Most of those products are quadrivalent, meaning they target four types of influenza — the influenza A viruses H1N1 and H3N2, and two lineages of flu B viruses, B/Victoria and B/Yamagata.
Europe Has a New COVID Jabs Plan
Despite the controversies, the European Union isn’t sick of COVID shots. The union is orchestrating a tender for nearly 150 million doses of mRNA COVID vaccines updated to the dominant variant, in a move that is widely expected to award Moderna a new contract.
But it lands at an awkward time. As the threat from the pandemic has diminished and people opt to miss their boosters, countries have been unable to use up their COVID vaccines fast enough. As of last year, at least 215 million expired doses were binned at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of €4 billion, as revealed by POLITICO.
Meanwhile, in Hungary and Poland, Pfizer is suing after the countries stopped paying their share of the vaccine bill, saying they didn’t need more doses. Nonetheless, that leaves only one vaccine option on the table. The remaining vaccines from Moderna, Novavax and others have either expired or the doses have all been delivered.
That said, 18 EU countries have signed up, plus Norway and the Republic of Northern Macedonia, demonstrating a strong interest in another COVID shot. The tender is being led by the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).
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