Fol­low­ing re­ports from Joe Biden’s tran­si­tion team that the Pres­i­dent-elect is plan­ning to re­lease near­ly every avail­able dose of Covid-19 vac­cines when he takes of­fice, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is plan­ning to speed up vac­ci­na­tions be­fore next week’s in­au­gu­ra­tion.

New fed­er­al guide­lines planned for Tues­day will rec­om­mend let­ting every­one old­er than 65 get a vac­cine, as well as all adults at high risk for in­fec­tion, ac­cord­ing to re­ports from Ax­ios and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The move would get shots in­to arms rather than hold­ing some dos­es back for sec­ond shots of two-dose reg­i­mens.

States would then de­ter­mine who should get the vac­cine based on CDC guide­lines. The vac­ci­na­tion push would al­so ex­pand where peo­ple can get vac­ci­nat­ed to in­clude com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters and more phar­ma­cies. In Cal­i­for­nia’s case, base­ball sta­di­ums and Dis­ney­land will al­so serve as vac­ci­na­tion cen­ters, per a New York Times re­port.

Trump’s HHS had been hold­ing back the sec­ond shots de­spite claims from crit­ics that Covid-19 vac­cines were not be­ing dis­trib­uted quick­ly enough. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have dis­trib­uted more than 25 mil­lion dos­es across the coun­try, but on­ly 9 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have re­ceived shots, the CDC said Mon­day.

Biden has made it a pri­or­i­ty of his in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion to try to vac­ci­nate as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, pledg­ing to get 100 mil­lion shots in­to arms in his first 100 days. It’s yet to be seen whether he can ramp up dis­tri­b­u­tion quick­ly enough to meet that goal.

EMA could au­tho­rize As­traZeneca/Ox­ford vac­cine by the end of Jan­u­ary

As­traZeneca and Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, whose Covid-19 vac­cine tri­als ran in­to trou­ble over the sum­mer due to ad­verse events, could see its jabs au­tho­rized in Eu­rope by the end of the month.

The re­view of the vac­cine is slat­ed to pro­ceed un­der an ac­cel­er­at­ed time­line, the EMA said Tues­day, with a pos­si­ble au­tho­riza­tion de­ci­sion com­ing Jan. 29. Though that date is on­ly less than three weeks from now, the agency said it has al­ready looked at some da­ta from the phar­ma as part of its rolling re­view process.

If en­dorsed by the EMA’s CHMP and for­mal­ly au­tho­rized by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, the As­traZeneca/Ox­ford vac­cine would be­come the third avail­able on the con­ti­nent, af­ter the Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech and Mod­er­na vac­cines.

Pas­cal So­ri­ot As­traZeneca

Though the As­traZeneca/Ox­ford vac­cine is cheap­er and eas­i­er to dis­trib­ute, con­cerns arose over its da­ta read­outs that showed it was on­ly 70% ef­fec­tive on av­er­age, com­pared to fig­ures in the mid-90% range by ri­vals. Some re­searchers point­ed out that a sub­pop­u­la­tion who had ac­ci­den­tal­ly re­ceived a half-dose and then a full-dose saw an ef­fec­tive­ness greater than 90%, al­though that end­ed up rais­ing more ques­tions.

But the com­pa­ny re­ceived a vote of con­fi­dence in late De­cem­ber when the vac­cine was au­tho­rized by the UK. CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot has teased a new ap­proach here, as ex­perts say the vac­cine could be more ef­fec­tive when giv­en three months apart as op­posed to the 28-day sched­ule con­duct­ed dur­ing its tri­als.

Vir and GSK an­ti­body to be ex­am­ined in NHS-backed study

The NHS is back­ing a small tri­al for a new Covid-19 treat­ment in an out­pa­tient set­ting.

Vir and GSK are team­ing up for a Phase Ib/IIa study to eval­u­ate VIR-7832 in pa­tients with mild to mod­er­ate Covid-19 cas­es, the com­pa­nies said Tues­day morn­ing. The pro­gram is a neu­tral­iz­ing an­ti­body with pre­clin­i­cal da­ta sug­gest­ing an abil­i­ty to clear in­fect­ed cells and the po­ten­tial to en­hance virus-spe­cif­ic T-cell func­tion, pro­tect­ing healthy cells from the virus.

The pair hope the lat­ter as­pect could help treat, and pos­si­bly pre­vent, Covid-19 in­fec­tion.

This study will be the first to test the can­di­date in hu­mans. In the Phase Ib por­tion, 24 par­tic­i­pants will be ran­dom­ized 3:1 to re­ceive one dose of the ex­per­i­men­tal drug or place­bo, af­ter which the cho­sen dose will move in­to Phase IIa.

Then, Phase IIa will in­clude three treat­ment arms: 50 pa­tients ran­dom­ized to VIR-7832, 50 pa­tients to a sep­a­rate pro­gram, VIR-7831, and 25 pa­tients to place­bo. The co-pri­ma­ry end­points are safe­ty and vi­ro­log­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of VIR-7832, as mea­sured by a change in SARS-CoV-2 vi­ral load from base­line to day eight.

Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment stems from an April col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ment be­tween Vir and GSK. VIR-7831, the sec­ond pro­gram in­clud­ed in the Phase IIa por­tion, was se­lect­ed by the NIH in De­cem­ber for a study in mod­er­ate­ly ill hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients.

IRC warns of in­equitable Covid-19 vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion

The In­ter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, a hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid or­ga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Al­bert Ein­stein in the 1930s, is warn­ing that bil­lions of peo­ple around the world may not re­ceive Covid-19 vac­ci­na­tions this year.

Glob­al short­ages of vac­cines, cou­pled with “vac­cine na­tion­al­ism,” will re­sult in the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in low-in­come and con­flict-af­fect­ed ar­eas miss­ing out on vac­cines in 2021 or pos­si­bly for many years, the or­ga­ni­za­tion said. The WHO-backed ini­tia­tive CO­V­AX, which aims to get vac­cines to these ar­eas, es­ti­mates that at most 20% of these pop­u­la­tions will get vac­ci­nat­ed by the start of next year.

IRC al­so not­ed con­cerns about the re­quire­ment for many of the au­tho­rized vac­cines to be stored in ex­treme­ly cold tem­per­a­tures.

Mes­fin Tek­lu Tesse­ma, se­nior health di­rec­tor for the In­ter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, said in a state­ment:

“To en­sure no one is left be­hind, in­vest­ments must be made im­me­di­ate­ly to strength­en health sys­tems. This in­cludes shoring up sup­ply chains, al­lo­cat­ing sus­tain­able and ad­e­quate fi­nanc­ing, and em­pow­er­ing front­line and com­mu­ni­ty health work­ers, who can de­liv­er care di­rect­ly to those in need with­in their lo­cal set­tings. To do this, we urge high-in­come coun­tries to in­crease their in­vest­ments to both the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty and broad­er hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance that re­mains every bit as es­sen­tial, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the sever­i­ty of COVID-19’s sec­ondary im­pacts.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Hours before President Biden’s Covid-19 team gave their first virtual press conference, the famed AIDS researcher David Ho delivered concerning news in a new pre-print: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351, the variant that emerged in South Africa, is “markedly more resistant” to antibodies from convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.

The news for several monoclonal antibodies, including Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab, was even worse: Their ability to neutralize was “completely or markedly abolished,” Ho wrote. Lilly’s antibody cocktail, which was just shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalizations or death, also became far less potent.