Mod­er­na said Wednes­day that peo­ple won’t need to pay out-of-pock­et for its Covid vac­cine, re­gard­less of their in­sur­ance sta­tus, once the US gov­ern­ment stops cov­er­ing the cost of the shots.

Last week, the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices con­firmed plans to on May 11 end the fed­er­al Covid-19 pub­lic health emer­gency. Since Con­gress hasn’t signed off on ad­di­tion­al funds for vac­cines and treat­ments, the gov­ern­ment will halt its free shot pro­vi­sion this year.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to “en­sur­ing that Covid-19 vac­cines and treat­ments will be wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble to all who need them,” and added that Covid vac­cines will con­tin­ue to be cov­ered by Medicare Part B and most pri­vate in­sur­ance plans with no cost-shar­ing.

On Wednes­day, Mod­er­na an­nounced that those who are unin­sured or un­der­in­sured will al­so be able to re­ceive the com­pa­ny’s shots at no cost through a pa­tient as­sis­tance pro­gram launch­ing af­ter the pub­lic health emer­gency ex­pires.

“Every­one in the Unit­ed States will have ac­cess to Mod­er­na’s Covid-19 vac­cine re­gard­less of their abil­i­ty to pay,” the com­pa­ny said in a news re­lease.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair­man of the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, La­bor and Pen­sions, con­demned Mod­er­na’s re­port­ed plans to quadru­ple the price of its Covid-19 vac­cine in a let­ter to CEO Stéphane Ban­cel last month. Ban­cel told the Wall Street Jour­nal that Mod­er­na is con­sid­er­ing pric­ing its vac­cine be­tween $110 and $130 per dose in the US, the same range Pfiz­er sug­gest­ed last fall, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple re­ports. Mod­er­na de­clined fur­ther com­ment.

“The huge in­crease in price that you have pro­posed will have a sig­nif­i­cant­ly neg­a­tive im­pact on the bud­gets of Med­ic­aid, Medicare and oth­er gov­ern­ment pro­grams that will con­tin­ue cov­er­ing the vac­cine with­out cost-shar­ing for pa­tients,” Sanders wrote. “Your de­ci­sion will cost tax­pay­ers bil­lions of dol­lars. Your out­ra­geous price boost will al­so in­crease pri­vate health in­sur­ance pre­mi­ums.”

Ban­cel has agreed to ap­pear be­fore HELP on March 22, ac­cord­ing to Sanders.

Boost­er shots

US boost­er up­take con­tin­ues to crawl, with just 15.8% of Amer­i­cans hav­ing rolled up their sleeves for the up­dat­ed vac­cine, ac­cord­ing to the CDC’s lat­est da­ta. For com­par­i­son, more than 80% of el­i­gi­ble Amer­i­cans have re­ceived at least one dose of a Covid vac­cine.

Last month, the FDA’s Vac­cines and Re­lat­ed Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly in fa­vor of “har­mo­niz­ing” Covid vac­cine com­po­si­tions, mean­ing all cur­rent vac­cine re­cip­i­ents would re­ceive a bi­va­lent vac­cine, re­gard­less of whether they’ve got­ten their pri­ma­ry se­ries, in an ef­fort to clear up con­fu­sion and “get clos­er to the strains that are cir­cu­lat­ing,” one mem­ber said.

De­spite slow up­take, Ban­cel ex­pects at least $5 bil­lion in 2023 vac­cine sales from al­ready con­firmed ad­vance pur­chase agree­ments and 2022 con­tract de­fer­rals.

Pfiz­er has pre­vi­ous­ly com­mit­ted to of­fer­ing unin­sured US res­i­dents free ac­cess to its vac­cine through the com­pa­ny’s pa­tient as­sis­tance pro­gram.

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.

Otonomy may be shutting down, but the lessons learned there will live on at another biotech working on new treatments for hearing loss.

San Francisco-based Spiral Therapeutics has bought certain assets related to three of Otonomy’s programs, ranging from data, patent rights, and know-how to inventory. That includes data around Otonomy’s twice-failed lead program, OTO-104 (Otividex), a sustained-exposure formulation of dexamethasone.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”