Enlarge / A curious pair of black-footed ferret kits survey the shortgrass prairie from their outdoor enclosures at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado. (credit: Ryan Moehring | US Fish and Wildlife Service (CC BY-2.0) )

In late summer, as researchers accelerated the first clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines for humans, a group of scientists in Colorado worked to inoculate a far more fragile species.

About 120 black-footed ferrets, among the most endangered mammals in North America, were injected with an experimental COVID vaccine aimed at protecting the small, weasel-like creatures rescued from the brink of extinction four decades ago.

The effort came months before US Department of Agriculture officials began accepting applications from veterinary drugmakers for a commercial vaccine for minks, a close cousin of the ferrets. Farmed minks, raised for their valuable fur, have died by the tens of thousands in the US and been culled by the millions in Europe after catching the COVID virus from infected humans.

Enlarge / A nurse in the UK holds a vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 22, 2020. (credit: Lindsey Parnaby | AFP | Getty Images )

The Federal government has reached a deal with drugmaker Pfizer to secure an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine before the end of July, the company said today.

Under the terms of the new agreement , the government will pay $1.95 billion for the additional doses. Of the new vaccine doses, 70 million are due by June 30, with the remaining 30 million to be delivered no later than July 31. The agreement also provides US authorities with the option to order up to 400 million additional doses of the vaccine later.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement that the additional Pfizer vaccine "can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021," when added to the 100 million doses the US government has already agreed to purchase from Pfizer, as well as the recently approved Moderna vaccine .

Enlarge / This unassuming building in Massachusetts has taken on remarkable significance in recent weeks. (credit: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Getty Images )

Earlier this week, the FDA released documents that summarized the data on a second SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, this one from a company called Moderna. That document was the background for a meeting of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which would consider whether the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its potential risks. That question is one of the key considerations for the agency as it decides whether to grant an emergency use authorization similar to the one it gave the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine .

After an all-day meeting that frequently focused on other topics, the committee was near unanimous: 20 votes for approval, none against, and one abstention.

Emergency use authorizations have a number of requirements once a health emergency hsa been declared. There must be no alternatives that have achieved full FDA approval, there must be reasons to think that the treatment will be effective, and its benefits are considered likely to outweigh its risks. It's that final question—the risk vs. benefit balance—that the advisory committee was called to address.

Enlarge / A medical worker holds a bottle of a candidate COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University that is being tested in a trial in Soweto, South Africa. (credit: Getty | Gallo Images )

On Monday, a press release from the transnational pharmaceutical company Pfizer dropped a rare spark of hope into the ongoing misery of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yes, new infections have hit an all-time high in the United States, and, yes, cities and states around the world are walking back their reopenings. But Pfizer says it has results from a massive clinical trial showing that its vaccine against the disease works, and works well. The release touted “a vaccine efficacy rate above 90 percent,” and it announced the company’s intention to seek from the US Food and Drug Administration an authorization to start giving people shots. The company’s ready to make 50 million doses this year and 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

That’s an ember of hope, but it’s sitting under a bucket of cold water, ready to pour. The Pfizer vaccine is finicky—hard to make, transport, and deliver. Because of desperate need, it’s in short supply even before it becomes available—1.3 billion doses is several billion short of what the world needs. The press release wasn’t peer-reviewed science, and it lacked critical details about how the vaccine works, and on whom. Even the simple fact of this vaccine’s existence, some analysts have argued, might jeopardize the testing and success of potentially better vaccines down the line, a case of the imperfect being the enemy of the good.

Before the ember dies out completely, here’s a theory: No. The Pfizer vaccine’s imperfections make it a perfect prime mover, because if it works as well as the company says, it’ll help people now and require research into more, better, different vaccines for later. All the things nobody knows about the Pfizer vaccine mean that the door is wide open. “Whether its effects are durable, whether it’s effective in the elderly, whether it has safety issues, the cold chain issues, the ability to have access,” says Wayne Koff, president and CEO of the nonprofit Human Vaccines Project, “all that points to the need for a number of vaccines.”

Enlarge / President Donald Trump listens as Moncef Slaoui, the former head of GlaxoSmithKlines vaccines division, speaks about coronavirus vaccine development in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 15, 2020 in Washington, DC. (credit: Drew Angerer | Getty Images)

The head of Donald Trump’s flagship vaccine project has called on the White House to allow Operation Warp Speed to make contact with Joe Biden’s transition team, warning that interrupting its work would put thousands of lives at risk.

Moncef Slaoui, a veteran pharmaceuticals executive who was appointed by Mr. Trump to accelerate the hunt for a vaccine, told the Financial Times he wanted to make sure his project continued operating without impediment during the transfer of power.

The comments from Mr. Slaoui, whose project is overseeing the development of five potential vaccines, come as the president faces pressure to concede defeat and allow a transition to the Biden administration to begin.

Enlarge / Even Santas are not safe during the pandemic. (credit: Getty | Kristy O'Connor )

The Department of Health and Human Services has abandoned a deal to vaccinate Santa Claus performers as part of a $250-million taxpayer-funded public relations blitz, The Wall Street Journal reports.

According to the nixed Santa plan, performers would have received special early access to a future vaccine against the pandemic coronavirus. In exchange, the Santa Clauses, Mrs. Clauses, and accompanying elves would have promoted the vaccine to the public and participated in regional holiday events organized by the Trump administration.

Beginning to look a lot like chaos

The deal was reportedly gifted from the troubled mind of Michael Caputo, the HHS spokesperson installed by the White House in April. Caputo had no background in health when he took the position. Instead, he was reportedly placed in the department as a way for the Trump administration to assert more control over HHS Secretary Alex Azar . Caputo is a Trump loyalist, protégé of Roger Stone, and former Moscow-based political adviser who worked on public relations for Vladimir Putin.

Enlarge / Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the progress on a COVID-19 vaccine during his visit to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing on March 2, 2020. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency )

China has now signed onto a massive, global alliance to develop and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine—putting the United States’ absence from the pact into yet sharper relief.

With its late entry announced Friday, China joins at around 170 other countries in the pact, called the COVAX Facility . The effort is being spearheaded by the World Health Organization and co-led along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

COVAX is designed to pool resources to help develop a vaccine and bring it to market globally. Once at that point, the alliance will help ensure all participating countries have access to whichever vaccine candidate(s) prove successful, regardless of where it was developed. It will also provide financial assistance to lower income countries to access the vaccine. So far, at least 77 high-income countries (including China) have signed on, as well as 92 low- and middle-income countries.

Enlarge / MOSCOW, RUSSIA - SEPTEMBER 4, 2020: Medical staff with newly delivered boxes containing COVID-19 vaccine in a cold room at No2 Outpatient Clinic in southern Moscow. (credit: Stanislav Krasilnikov / Getty Images )

Russia has been one of the countries hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. But its response to that has been a bit... unusual. As many other countries have, Russia worked to develop its own vaccine. But while that development was still in progress, it announced that it wasn't going to wait for detailed safety data , and instead roll the vaccine out to millions. Shortly afterwards, it became clear that the country was actually going to run a standard phase 3 clinical trial , albeit a large one, involving 40,000 people.

It was hard to judge whether any of this was reasonable, because few details of the vaccine itself were available. But that changed somewhat on Friday, as the people who developed the vaccine published the results of the initial clinical trials. And so far, it seems to be about as effective as some of the other ones that have been made it past initial trials.

Two viruses better than one?

As our earlier coverage mentioned, the vaccine is composed of two different engineered viruses. These contain the backbone of an innocuous virus, called an adenovirus, engineered to include the gene that encodes the major surface protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This protein, called Spike, is what the coronavirus uses to latch on to and enter cells. The use of adenovirus allows the immune system to learn to recognize the Spike protein while the body only experiences a harmless adenovirus infection.

Enlarge / Robert F. Kennedy Jr., heads up to a meeting at Trump Tower on January 10, 2017 in New York City. (credit: Spencer Platt | Getty Images )

A notorious anti-vaccine group spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed suit today in federal court in California alleging that Facebook's fact-checking program for false scientific or medical misinformation violates its constitutional rights.

Children's Health Defense claims in its suit ( PDF ) that Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the organizations Science Feedback, Poynter, and PolitiFact acted "jointly or in concert with federal government agencies" to infringe on CHD's First and Fifth Amendment rights. The suit also alleges Facebook and the fact-checking organizations colluded to commit wire fraud by "clearing the field" of anti-vaccine ads.

Facebook has "insidious conflicts with the pharmaceutical industry and its captive health agencies," CHD claimed in a press release. "Facebook currently censors Children’s Health Defense’s page, targeting its purge against factual information about vaccines, 5G and public health agencies."