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Covid-19 vaccine makers are shifting gears and planning for a smaller, more competitive booster shot market after delivering as many doses as fast as they could over the last 18 months. Executives at the biggest Covid vaccine makers including Pfizer and Moderna said they believe most people who wanted to get vaccinated against Covid have already done so - more than five billion people worldwide. In the coming year, most Covid vaccinations will be booster shots, or first inoculations for children, which are still gaining regulatory approvals around the world, they said. Pfizer, which makes its shot with Germany's BioNTech and Moderna still see a major role for themselves in the vaccine market even as overall demand declines. Upstart US vaccine maker Novavax and Germany's CureVac, which is working with GlaxoSmithKline, are developing vaccines they hope to target at the booster market. The roles of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, whose shots have been less popular or effective, are expected to decline in this market.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on Tuesday authorised a Covid-19 vaccine for infants as young as six months, opening the door for vaccinating the country's youngest children once the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) agrees. The regulator authorised the vaccine - made by Pfizer and BioNTech - for children aged six months to four years old, after it was deemed safe and effective based on an ongoing clinical trial involving 4,526 participants. Whether the vaccine is eventually deployed in this age group depends on a recommendation from the JCVI, which advises UK health departments on which shots should be used as part of the national vaccination programme. The vaccine is tailored for use in this age group - it is a lower dose version than the one used in children aged five to 11 years. It is given as three injections in the upper arm, with the first two doses given three weeks apart, followed by a third dose administered at least two months after the second dose.

All children aged five to 11 in England will be offered a Covid-19 vaccine, the government said on Wednesday (February 16) - following similar announcements in the rest of the UK. The move, coming nearly two months after British regulators approved Pfizer and BioNTech's shot for use among the age group, sees Britain following the lead of the United States, the European Union and other countries. It has only been vaccinating at-risk under-12s and those who live with immuno-suppressed people, using a lower-dose formulation of the jab that was found to be "safe and effective". However, health secretary Sajid Javid - who has responsibility for England only - said he had now accepted guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises UK health departments, to expand the rollout. "The NHS will prepare to extend this non-urgent offer to all children during April so parents can, if they want, take up the offer to increase protection against potential future waves of Covid-19 as we learn to live with this virus," he said in a statement.

Britain has approved Novavax's Covid-19 vaccine for use in those 18 years of age and older, the country's medicines regulator said on Thursday (February 3), bringing a fifth coronavirus shot to its roster amidst the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. The vaccine, Nuvaxovid, was approved as a first and second dose as it met the required safety, quality and effectiveness standards, the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement. The British approval for Nuvaxovid comes days after the drugmaker filed for US authorisation of the vaccine following months of struggles with development and manufacturing problems, and follows a German backing earlier in the day. "We are continuing our vital safety work in monitoring the use of all Covid-19 vaccines, to ensure that their benefits in protecting people against Covid-19 disease continue to outweigh any risks," MHRA chief executive June Raine said.

A new study has revealed that the risk of death from COVID-19 decreases significantly after vaccination, but this protection diminishes after six months, providing evidence for continued booster doses. Researchers from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), who analysed more than 10 million cases of COVID-19 in adults in England between May 2020 and February 2022, found a clear association between vaccination and reduced mortality. But they also highlighted a crucial timeframe - within six months of the last vaccine dose - when Case Fatality Risk (CFR) - the proportion of cases that resulted in death - was consistently at its lowest across all age groups. After this, the protective benefit of the vaccine began to wane and CFR increased.

Britain has approved a new coronavirus vaccine by the Austrian-French drugmaker Valneva. "An approval has been granted after the Valneva Covid-19 vaccine was found to meet the required safety, quality and effectiveness standards," the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said in a statement on Thursday (April 14), adding: "It is also the first, whole-virus inactivated Covid-19 vaccine to gain regulatory approval in the UK." In vaccines such as Valneva's VLA2001, the virus is grown in a lab and then made completely inactive so that it cannot infect cells or replicate in the body but can still trigger an immune response. It is seen by some as having the potential to win over people wary of some which use new mRNA technology. Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach said that "this authorisation could pave the way for the availability of an alternative vaccine solution for the UK population."

Johnson & Johnson said on Wednesday (January 18) that it was pulling the plug on a late-stage global trial of an HIV vaccine after the shot was found ineffective at preventing infections. The failure of the trial marks yet another setback in the search for a vaccine against a virus known to mutate rapidly and find unique ways to evade the immune system, and comes more than a year after another of J&J's HIV vaccine failed a study. "It's not the outcome we had hoped for, unfortunately," said a spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a J&J partner in the trial. "The development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine has been a considerable scientific challenge, but we will learn from this study and continue forward." The trial involved administering two different types of a shot, which uses a cold-causing virus to deliver the genetic code of HIV, spread over four vaccination visits in a year. J&J used similar technology for its COVID-19 vaccine. The study, which began in 2019, was conducted at over 50 sites and included about 3,900 gay men and transgender people - groups that are considered vulnerable to the infection.

Scientists Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman from Hungary and the United States respectively won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries enabling the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the award-giving body said on Monday. The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute medical university and also comes with 11 million Swedish crowns (about £823,500). "The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19," the body said. Kariko was senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech until 2022 and has since acted as an adviser to the company. She is also a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Weissman is professor in vaccine research at the Perelman School.

The NHS on Thursday (May 5) said it has rolled out the arthritis drug baricitinib for seriously ill Covid patients. The Recovery trial, conducted by the NHS and University of Oxford, found that 13 per cent fewer severely ill patients died of Covid when treated with the drug compared to existing treatment options. Typically used to treat arthritis to reduce pain and inflammation, baricitinib can now be given to hospitalised Covid patients in addition to current treatments, and clinical studies show that this can provide benefits on top of existing treatment. The NHS has led the rollout of Covid medicines, from the discovery of dexamethasone as the world's first effective treatment, to the first vaccination outside of a clinical trial in December 2020. The NHS said baricitinib works by reducing inflammation caused by Covid-19 by blocking signals to the immune system that are causing it to attack the body.

Health authorities in India have said that Biological E's Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax can be administered as a booster dose in people who have taken the country's other two main shots, Covaxin and AstraZeneca's Covishield, from Friday (Aug 12). Corbevax will be available to over 18s as precautionary booster six months after a second dose, the health ministry said in an August 8 letter to state authorities. Covishield is produced for the Indian market by the Serum Institute of India under licence from AstraZeneca, while Bharat Biotech makes Covaxin. India has so far administered more than 2 billion Covid vaccine shots, including 113 million boosters, all of which have so far been of the same vaccine as the recipient's first two doses. The government says about 89 per cent of Indians above the age of 12 have had two doses.

The British scientists behind one of the major therapeutic Covid-19 trials have turned their focus to treatments for monkeypox, a viral disease that has been labelled a global health emergency by the World Health Organization. The team from Oxford University behind the so-called RECOVERY trial - which honed in on four effective Covid treatments - on Tuesday unveiled a new trial, dubbed PLATINUM, to confirm whether Siga Technologies' tecovirimat is an effective treatment for monkeypox. Although there are vaccines developed for the closely related smallpox that can reduce the risk of catching monkeypox, there are currently no treatments that have been proven to help hasten recovery in those who develop the disease. The UK has over 3,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox. The virus is transmitted chiefly through close contact with an infected person. It typically causes mild symptoms including fever, rash, swollen lymph nodes and pus-filled skin lesions. Severe cases can occur, though people tend to recover within two to four weeks. Siga's drug, branded Tpoxx, has been cleared to treat diseases caused by the family of orthopoxvirus that includes smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox by the European Union and United Kingdom, but due to limited trial data it is generally only used in severe cases in Britain.