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As concerns rise over the delta variant, the White House is sending out Covid-19 response teams across the U.S. More on that below. Meg Tirrell has the latest on Intellia, the biotech company working on gene-editing technology. Bertha Coombs has details about insurance coverage of Biogen's pricy Alzheimer's drug.
| | White House to deploy response teams to fight delta variant | The Biden administration announced this week that it is sending Covid-19 response teams across the U.S. to combat the highly contagious delta variant. The teams, comprised of officials from the CDC and other federal agencies, will work with communities at high risk of experiencing outbreaks, officials said. The announcement highlighted just how seriously officials are taking delta, which is expected to become the dominant variant in the U.S. There was some good news this week on the variant. Both Moderna and J&J reported that their vaccines showed promise against delta.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | CureVac to move forward with vaccine despite disappointing results | CureVac plans to continue work on its Covid-19 vaccine despite disappointing clinical trial results that showed the shot is just 48% effective. The German biotech firm published its final analysis of the clinical trials of its vaccine this week. Pierre Kemula, CFO of CureVac, defended the vaccine on CNBC Thursday, saying the clinical trials had been conducted at a time when multiple new strains of the virus were spreading across the world.
-Holly Ellyatt | | | | Intellia delivers a CRISPR breakthrough for rare disease | The biotech company's results, published Saturday, showed for the first time the gene-editing technology can be delivered systemically to the body as a medicine. Previous applications involved editing cells in a lab or injecting CRISPR directly into the target cells, like programs for blindness. The news sent shares not just of Intellia flying, but of other companies working in the gene-editing space as well – even though the results were in just six patients, from a phase 1 trial.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | Coverage for Biogen's Alzheimer's drug is complicated | The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have yet to issue coverage rules for Biogen's $54,000 drug Aduhelm. In the meantime, the drugmaker says it is working with insurers to make sure patients can afford the drug and have equitable access. But some doctors are inclined to tell patients it's not worth the out-of-pocket costs for the drug and expensive scans involved, because it's unclear whether the treatment really works. While Cigna is providing coverage for Aduhelm on its plans, its chief clinical officer is pushing for a national registry of all patients to be able to track and definitively determine the drug's efficacy.
-Bertha Coombs | | | | 1,000 counties in the U.S. have Covid vaccination coverage of less than 30% | The counties in question are mostly located in the Southeast and Midwest and are most vulnerable to Covid infection, according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. The agency is already seeing increasing rates of disease in these counties due to further spread of the more transmissible delta variant, Walensky said. In some counties, delta variant rates are as high as 50%, according to the CDC. "We expect to see increased transmission in these communities unless we can vaccinate more people," Walensky said. Zip codes with the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy are located in states such as North Dakota, Idaho and Alabama.
-Rich Mendez | |
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