Covid-19 roundup: Mod­er­na re­port­ed­ly lack­ing enough mi­nor­i­ty par­tic­i­pants; Pfiz­er, BioN­Tech and Re­gen­eron sued for al­leged patent in­fringe­ment

Pri­vate con­trac­tors work­ing for Mod­er­na $MR­NA did not en­roll enough mi­nor­i­ty par­tic­i­pants in its Covid-19 vac­cine tri­al to de­ter­mine whether or not the can­di­date works in these pop­u­la­tions, ac­cord­ing to a Reuters re­port.

To make up for this dis­crep­an­cy, Mod­er­na slowed en­roll­ment of the study and di­rect­ed tri­al sites to fo­cus on re­cruit­ing more Black, Lati­no and Na­tive Amer­i­can vol­un­teers, com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives told Reuters. Per the re­port, the con­trac­tors quick­ly filled a large por­tion of the 30,000-pa­tient tri­al with most­ly white par­tic­i­pants de­spite Covid-19 in­fect­ing three times as many Black in­di­vid­u­als.

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