The US gov­ern­ment is shift­ing its dis­tri­b­u­tion of mAb in­fu­sions to fight the coro­n­avirus, de­cid­ing to go from sup­ply­ing tens of thou­sands of dos­es of Glax­o­SmithK­line and Vir’s mAb treat­ment sotro­vimab in re­cent months to ze­ro dos­es for the en­tire month of De­cem­ber.

That halt has led to spec­u­la­tion the gov­ern­ment was pri­or­i­tiz­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of Re­gen­eron mAb com­bo of casiriv­imab and imde­vimab and Eli Lil­ly’s com­bo of bam­lanivimab and ete­se­vimab be­cause both com­pa­nies have in­di­cat­ed that their in­fu­sions might not work as well against the Omi­cron vari­ant (when com­pared to Delta).

But an HHS spokesper­son said the rapid rise of the Omi­cron vari­ant was not the cause for this pause in sotro­vimab ship­ments.

“We tem­porar­i­ly paused dis­tri­b­u­tion of sotro­vimab in or­der to uti­lize more of the bam­lanivimab/ete­se­vimab prod­uct, of which we have greater sup­ply and be­cause the prod­uct re­cent­ly re­ceived an ex­pand­ed FDA emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion to now in­clude pe­di­atric pa­tients,” an HHS spokesper­son said. “We will con­tin­ue to as­sess the COVID-19 en­vi­ron­ment and ad­just prod­uct dis­tri­b­u­tion ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Lil­ly said in a state­ment that it has been ramp­ing up ship­ments over the past three months. In ear­ly No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny said it signed a $1.29 bil­lion deal to sup­ply more than 600,000 dos­es of the bam­lanivimab with ete­se­vimab com­bo, by no lat­er than Jan. 31, 2022.

In­evitably the Omi­cron vari­ant may end up caus­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to pri­or­i­tize sotro­vimab again as lab stud­ies in­di­cate GSK and Vir’s mAb may fair bet­ter against the Omi­cron vari­ant than Re­gen­eron or Lil­ly, al­though its ef­fi­ca­cy will like­ly still de­cline. GSK de­clined to com­ment on the gov­ern­ment’s dis­tri­b­u­tion plan.

The FDA is al­so like­ly to of­fer its take on the vari­ant sit­u­a­tion, as the agency in March up­dat­ed its fact sheets on the Eli Lil­ly and Re­gen­eron mAbs, pro­vid­ing new da­ta on how they fared against the pre­vi­ous vari­ants orig­i­nat­ing in the UK, Brazil, South Africa, Cal­i­for­nia and New York.

GSK and Vir, which said last week that their mAb main­tains its ef­fi­ca­cy against Omi­cron, turned over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of their mAb to the US gov­ern­ment in Oc­to­ber af­ter strik­ing a near­ly $280 mil­lion pro­cure­ment deal.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.