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.”

Stéphane Ban­cel, CEO of Mod­er­na:

"it's sad to say, I'm in the process of throw­ing 30 mil­lion dos­es in the garbage be­cause no­body wants them. We have a big de­mand prob­lem."

Notes that Chi­na does­n't want any MR­NA prod­ucts and how there's 7 bil­lion dos­es.https://t.co/xfKZb­VT8RJ pic.twit­ter.com/WVboChD­ma7

— Efron Mon­san­to 🇨🇦🚜🚛 (@real­monsan­to) May 23, 2022

Ac­cord­ing to Swiss news site Swiss­In­fo, the cost of de­stroy­ing the vac­cines will be one franc, or $1.05, per kilo­gram. An es­ti­mat­ed 7 mil­lion Covid vac­cine dos­es are re­main­ing in the coun­try, but the num­ber of vac­ci­na­tions has fall­en sharply in re­cent months. Swiss­In­fo not­ed that in May, around 1,200 dos­es were be­ing ad­min­is­tered a day, with the Swiss gov­ern­ment hav­ing bought 34 mil­lion dos­es for 2022.

In Feb­ru­ary, the gov­ern­ment said that 15 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es could be trans­ferred to the CO­V­AX pro­gram which seeks to en­sure fair and eq­ui­table ac­cess to Covid-19 vac­cines world­wide and dis­trib­utes vac­cines to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, how­ev­er, ne­go­ti­a­tions on this are said to be on­go­ing.

Switzer­land is not the on­ly Eu­ro­pean coun­try prep­ping for vac­cine de­struc­tion. Ear­li­er this month, health of­fi­cials in Den­mark, ac­cord­ing to Al Jazeera, said that 1.1 mil­lion ex­cess Covid-19 vac­cines had to be dis­card­ed due to the ex­pi­ra­tion date  and ef­forts to do­nate them to oth­er coun­tries failed.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the BBC, around 4.7 mil­lion Covid vac­cine dos­es end­ed up as wastage, in­clud­ing dos­es that had to be de­stroyed to the ex­pi­ra­tion date hit­ting, in Eng­land by the end of Oc­to­ber 2021, with the As­traZeneca vac­cine mak­ing up around 1.9 mil­lion of those dumped.

In the US, as pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed, a re­port re­vealed that Emer­gent had to de­stroy over 400 mil­lion dos­es of Covid-19 vac­cines af­ter fail­ures to meet qual­i­ty stan­dards.

Earlier this year, Novartis touted its radioligand as a major piece to counter competition in the cancer space. However, the physical production of its products has had anything but a smooth ride.

In May, Novartis had to suspend production of Lutathera and Pluvicto, its two primary radiotherapies. According to the company, this was done out of an abundance of caution as a result of potential quality issues identified in its manufacturing. The production suspension impacts the commercial and clinical trial supply of the products.

Lonza has been expanding its reach across the globe, bringing sites in China and the US online this year, but now they are looking closer to home for their next major investment.

The Swiss manufacturer on Friday announced plans to construct a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million, or $519 million, and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.

Two weeks ago, Biohaven hit an all-time high in weekly Nurtec prescriptions. CEO Vlad Coric attributes at least some of that success to a new interactive Twitter campaign that encourages patients to free their feed of potential migraine triggers.

Earlier this month, Biohaven in partnership with Twitter launched the #RelieveYourFeed campaign that allows users to customize their app settings based on their migraine triggers.

Over the past few months, oncologists have been talking a lot about the ASCO conference. Not surprising considering its import and the study data presented, but what may be less expected is the second most talked about topic of health equity.

That’s according to data from The Harris Poll and the new expert network the researcher is building out. While the company has been doing deep data dives into specific health issues or conditions for pharma clients, it’s now monitoring influencer networks of therapy area specialists to find out what experts are really thinking about.