You can add Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan’s $63 bil­lion merg­er to the list of plans po­ten­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed by Covid-19.

The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion said that it may need to of­fer ex­ten­sions on cer­tain cas­es be­cause coro­n­avirus-re­lat­ed dis­rup­tions may make it dif­fi­cult for com­pa­nies to make doc­u­ments and wit­ness­es avail­able, Bloomberg re­port­ed.

That could mean a sud­den road­block just be­fore the fin­ish line for the gi­ant drug­mak­ers, who have been slow-walk­ing their way to a merg­er since they an­nounced one last June. Most re­cent­ly, in ear­ly March, the Eu­ro­pean Union gave the all-clear and — months af­ter the FTC is­sued a rare “sec­ond re­quest” in their re­view of the buy­out — the two com­pa­nies said they had agreed to a time­line with the US agency to fin­ish by the first days of the 2nd quar­ter, i.e. ear­ly April or May.

The new­found mo­men­tum came af­ter Al­ler­gan di­vest­ed brazikum­ab, an IL-23 in­hibitor, back to As­traZeneca. In let­ters to the FTC, unions, con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy groups and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors raised an­titrust con­cerns about the drug’s sim­i­lar­i­ty to Ab­b­Vie’s IL-23 in­hibitor Skyrizi. Al­ler­gan’s en­docrine drug Zen­pep was al­so di­vest­ed to Nestlé for sim­i­lar rea­sons.

In a state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan said they had en­tered in­to a con­sent de­cree with the FTC on the di­vest­ments. The com­pa­nies said they ex­pect­ed to close in May.

Di­vesti­tures of this kind are rou­tine in Big Phar­ma merg­ers. Last year, Cel­gene di­vest­ed Ote­zla for $13.4 bil­lion as part of its buy­out by Bris­tol My­ers. The brazikum­ab sell-off, though, didn’t sat­is­fy many of the unions and con­sumer groups op­pos­ing the deal, who wrote to the FTC in Feb­ru­ary that As­traZeneca was ill-po­si­tioned to bring the drug for­ward and that Ab­b­Vie’s re­bate walls on Skyrizi would lim­it the ri­val drug’s mar­ket po­ten­tial.

This deal would make Ab­b­Vie the fourth largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny in the world.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

GSK, newly branded and soon-to-be demerged, shared interim results from its Phase II trial on its chronic hepatitis B treatment, one that it says has the “potential to lead to a functional cure.”

At a presentation at the EASL International Liver Congress, GSK shared that in around 450 patients who received its hep B drug bepirovirsen for 24 weeks, just under 30% had hepatitis B surface antigen and viral DNA levels that were too low to detect.

Sometimes, being late can give you an advantage.

That’s what Sanofi and GSK are trying to say as the Big Pharma partners report positive results from a late-stage trial of their next-gen bivalent Covid-19 vaccine, which was designed to protect against both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Beta variant. Specifically, against Omicron, they note, the vaccine delivered 72% efficacy in all adults and 93.2% in those previously infected.