Centre moves to reduce costs of trastuzumab deruxtecan, osimertinib & durvalumab, all 3 by British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca. Doctors seek exemptions for more such drugs.
Firm says vaccine has been superseded by updated ones that fight new variants & is no longer being made, supplied. Earlier, it had said its vaccine can cause a rare, dangerous side effect.
Vaccines have eliminated two diseases—smallpox in humans and rinderpest in cattle. If they were killing one in 50,000 people, we wouldn’t be rolling them out across the globe for decades.
The vaccine, marketed as Covishield in India, induced antibody concentrations in children similar to those associated with high efficacy in adults, says study by UK researchers.
Preliminary data released by AstraZeneca shows Vaxzevaria vaccine, administered in India as Covishield, increased immune response to Beta, Delta, Alpha, Gamma variants after third dose.
The study looked at safety, immune response and side-effects of seven vaccines — Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Novavax, Janssen, Moderna, Valneva and Curevac.
In the study spanning UK, Brazil and South Africa, the rate of miscarriage was roughly the same between vaccine and placebo groups, & no still births or neonatal deaths were recorded.
Industry insiders say any rise in duties on Indian generics will squeeze profits for Indian companies, but will also make the drugs costlier for patients in US.
As Narendra Modi becomes India’s second-longest consecutively serving Prime Minister, we look at how he compares with Indira Gandhi across four key dimensions.
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