As Mod­er­na piv­ots away from Covid-19 to oth­er vac­cines, the mR­NA-fo­cused biotech is still plot­ting how it could hit $13 bil­lion in an­nu­al US Covid-19 vac­cine sales, with $100 shots and 50% of all adults get­ting a boost­er.

But the Boston-based com­pa­ny’s lofty ex­pec­ta­tions, re­vealed in a slide show yes­ter­day as part of its R&D day, in­clud­ed an es­ti­mate that the world­wide pan­dem­ic Covid-19 vac­cines mar­ket is worth more than $100 bil­lion glob­al­ly, as in high-in­come coun­tries, the el­i­gi­ble high-risk pop­u­la­tion (el­der­ly and those with high risk) is about 340 mil­lion peo­ple.

“Our cur­rent pric­ing ap­proach with gov­ern­ments was in a pan­dem­ic set­ting; as we head to the com­mer­cial mar­ket, we’ll be look­ing at a more val­ue-based pric­ing,” Mod­er­na chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer Arpa Garay told in­vestors yes­ter­day.

And in the US, Amer­i­cans will have to fend with the com­mer­cial mar­ket as the gov­ern­ment won’t have the nec­es­sary funds to make Covid vac­cines free for all af­ter the end of this year.

But in­sur­ance will still like­ly cov­er much of the cost of the shots for many af­ter switch­ing over to a com­mer­cial mar­ket, and the US will still dole out about 170 mil­lion of the up­com­ing bi­va­lent boost­ers for free this fall and win­ter, HHS’ As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pre­pared­ness and Re­sponse Dawn O’Con­nell wrote in a blog post late last month.

Arpa Garay

Garay told in­vestors yes­ter­day, “The Covid mar­ket is go­ing to start re­flect­ing more like the flu mar­ket,” not­ing there’s a high like­li­hood that the Covid boost­ers will be an­nu­al, and most of the dose con­tracts will get done ear­ly in the year, and dos­es will be shipped lat­er, very sim­i­lar to the flu dy­nam­ic.

But plans for $100 Covid-19 vac­cines would be a new high, and al­most six times more than what the US gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly paid for the first dos­es.

Ini­tial­ly, ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, Mod­er­na charged the US gov­ern­ment $15 to $16.50 for each Covid-19 shot (al­though the gov­ern­ment al­so chipped in $1.3 bil­lion for its de­vel­op­ment), and the EU paid be­tween $22.60 and $25.50 for its Mod­er­na dos­es.

But Mod­er­na not­ed that it isn’t the on­ly one see­ing such a big price leap, as ac­cord­ing to CMS pro­jec­tions for 2023, the cen­ters es­ti­mate an av­er­age per dose Covid-19 vac­cine cost of $64, and vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion cost of $40.

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.

At Klick Health’s first Ideas Exchange conference with biotech and pharma industry insiders since before the pandemic began, it was no surprise many conversations included Covid topics. Yet while vaccines and treatments were discussed, so too were the effects on drug development, federal responses, health inequities — and what to do now and next.

George Yancopoulos, chief scientist and cofounder of Regeneron, opened the conference responding to a question from Acorda CEO Ron Cohen about the spotlight on the industry during Covid and some of the “flak” biopharma has taken in the past.

Though Moderna’s bivalent vaccine to counter the Omicron variant has cleared the initial hurdles in getting FDA authorization, the vaccine maker is moving on to the next step.

On Twitter, the company announced on Friday that it has filed a EUA for its bivalent vaccine for use in adolescents aged 12 through 17 and for smaller children aged six through 11.

We have submitted a request for emergency use authorization (EUA) for our Omicron-targeting bivalent #COVID19 #vaccine, mRNA-1273.222, in children and adolescents 12 to 17 years of age to the U.S. FDA. The EUA submission for children ages 6 to 11 years old was also completed. pic.twitter.com/8cj659zOU1