U.S. health officials are releasing second doses of coronavirus vaccines that had been held back for booster shots and administering the vaccine to anyone age 65 and older, as well as people with pre-existing health conditions.
Updated Jan. 12, 2021 5:03 pm ET
WASHINGTON At least three lawmakers who sheltered in a secure room during last week’s storming of the Capitol said they have since tested positive for Covid-19, adding to fears about the virus’s spread during the attack.
The lawmakers, all Democrats, said they had fled during the attack to the room where Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks. A video posted by Punchbowl News shows Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D., Del.) in the room offering masks to a group of House Republicans, who decline to put them on.
The Capitol’s physician told lawmakers and staff this weekend that those who were in the room might have been exposed to someone infected with Covid-19.
Bristol Myers Squibb could be on track to break out.
The drugmaker said Monday that its current pipeline of drugs could generate $25 billion in annual revenue, enough to replace lost revenue from expired patents by 2030.
Bristol (ticker: BMY) also boosted its share-buying program by $2 billion.
The company spent the last year in acquisition mode, with a $74 billion deal for Celgene in 2019 and a $13 billion deal for MyoKardia more recently. With $22 billion of cash on hand, there’s room for more of that, according to Bristol CEO Giovanni Caforio.
“We will continue to look for midsize bolt-on deals that further strengthen our object to grow the company into the second half of the decade,” Caforio said at JPMorgan’s healthcare conference on Monday.
Instead of taking his listeners through a leisurely survey of the outlook for
Sarepta Therapeutics, CEO Doug Ingram dove into a Monday talk for investors with a review of what went wrong in Sarepta’s trial of its gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The study’s failure to show a statistically significant strength improvement in children who were treated caused Sarepta stock (ticker: SRPT) to drop by half on Friday.
“I was not merely disappointed.” Ingram told his audience at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. “I was, to be frank, utterly gobsmacked.” Analysis soon convinced Ingram and his colleagues that the study’s failure to prove a benefit resulted from bad luck, not the treatment’s failure.