Mer­ck’s po­ten­tial Covid-19 treat­ment mol­nupi­ravir will not be used in France, French reg­u­la­tors said Fri­day.

The French Na­tion­al Au­thor­i­ty of Health cit­ed the po­ten­tial im­pact of the Omi­cron vari­ant, the fact that Re­gen­eron’s mAb cock­tail is more ef­fec­tive, and the pill’s own lack of ef­fi­ca­cy as rea­sons for deny­ing ear­ly ac­cess of the drug to pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enc­ing mild to mod­er­ate cas­es of Covid-19. France has al­ready pre-or­dered hun­dreds of thou­sands of the pills, with the goal of treat­ing 50,000 pa­tients.

In the US, the FDA’s an­timi­cro­bial drugs ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee last month vot­ed 13-10 in fa­vor of the pill’s ben­e­fits out­weigh­ing the risks for adults with­in 5 days of de­vel­op­ing Covid symp­toms. Bu the FDA has yet to au­tho­rize the pill.

Brii claims Chi­na’s first an­ti­body is ef­fec­tive against Omi­cron

Brii Bio­sciences is stand­ing by its Covid-19 an­ti­body cock­tail’s abil­i­ty to fight against the Omi­cron vari­ant, the Chi­nese biotech an­nounced Mon­day, even though one of the an­ti­bod­ies showed a drop in ac­tiv­i­ty when it was test­ed alone.

The cock­tail was the first ap­proved in Chi­na last week, but will not be avail­able for pur­chase un­til da­ta is pub­lished in a sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal. Re­sults from three dif­fer­ent labs showed sim­i­lar­i­ties, CEO Zhi Hong said.

“We be­lieve the amubarvimab/rom­lu­se­vimab com­bi­na­tion has the po­ten­tial to be a best-in-class treat­ment op­tion for a broad range of high risk COVID-19 pa­tients. These lat­est find­ings un­der­score that our com­bi­na­tion an­ti­body ther­a­py holds up well against the Omi­cron vari­ant that pose a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic health threat world­wide,” he said in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny has se­cured man­u­fac­tur­ing deals for 1 mil­lion dos­es a year over the next two years, and 80,000 dos­es are al­ready in in­ven­to­ry. No pur­chase deals have been an­nounced so far.

As concerns related to uptake and distribution continue to linger, Switzerland is among the first countries that plans to destroy hundreds of thousands of expired and unused Covid-19 vaccine doses.

The European country said it plans to destroy more than 600,000 doses of Moderna’s Spikevax Covid-19 vaccine as the doses have reached their expiration date.

However, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that he’s in the process of throwing 30 million doses in the garbage, exclaiming, “We have a big demand problem.”

At the end of January, the European Medicines Agency officially launched its new clinical trials info system (CTIS), although the migration to the new platform has only really just begun, and sponsors have until the end of January 2023 before all initial trial applications must be submitted through CTIS.

Overall, 56 clinical trial applications have been submitted in CTIS during the first 3 months since the launch of the system on Jan. 31, according to new data posted by the EMA. By comparison, about 4,000 new trials are authorized each year across Europe.

Concerns about rare but life-threatening blood clots have limited the use of J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine — once pitched as the only one-shot option in the mix — with the FDA cutting it off except in limited circumstances. Yet there’s some good news for those who did receive it: A single booster dose of an mRNA vaccine for recipients of a single priming dose of Ad26.COV2.S (the J&J vaccine) provided protection close to that of a three-dose mRNA vaccine regimen.

More than 500 stakeholders sent comments to the FTC on whether the commission should look further into pharma middlemen, known as PBMs, with many of the commenters calling for more federal oversight.

Similar to the critical open comment period in a deadlocked FTC session last February, pharmacies and pharmacy groups are continuing to call out the lack of transparency among the top 3 PBMs, which control about 80% of the market.