Max Nisen

When it rains good pandemic news, it pours. On a Monday that brought unexpectedly positive vaccine news from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, the Food and Drug Administration also granted emergency use authorization to an Eli Lilly & Co. drug to treatment for individuals newly infected with the…

Last week I wrote that based on clinical trial math, the earliest looks at coronavirus vaccine data were less likely to succeed. I've never been happier to be wrong. Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE announced Monday that their vaccine candidate prevented over 90% of Covid-19 cases in an early look at…

The 2020 election isn’t entirely settled, but one clear winner has emerged: the health care industrial complex. Health stocks, led by insurers and drugmakers, have been the darlings of the market since Election Day, soaring by double-digits in some cases. Beforehand, valuations had taken a hit…

Covid-19 antibody therapies, drugs that mimic the body’s response to infection, have been hailed as a “bridge to a vaccine.” They can’t get us there alone. Eli Lilly & Co.’s entrant in this category hit a roadblock Monday evening when the National Institutes of Health announced the failure of a…

Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir, now under the brand name Veklury, reached another milestone Thursday. It is now the first medicine to get full Food and Drug Administration approval to treat Covid-19. Investors seem to see the nod as a boost to the drug’s prospects, sending shares up more…

Vaccines and drugs get much of the attention in the scientific race to fight Covid-19. But companies have been working just as hard on ways to meet the enormous demand for testing. Those investments are beginning to pay off. Abbott Laboratories Inc. and ThermoFisher Scientific Inc., two major…

In late June, I highlighted what I deemed a “horrifying” chart showing massive growth in new infections in the US relative to the European Union. A key explanation for the discrepancy was that many US states were moving forward with reopening despite high case counts, while many European countries…

The world just got another reminder that vaccine development isn’t easy. Johnson & Johnson announced Monday that it was pausing the 60,000-person trial of its Covid-19 vaccine three weeks after it started because of an unexplained illness in a participant. The news comes a month after AstraZeneca…

Testing failures have weighed down the US Covid-19 response since the virus emerged. More than half a year in, many labs are overwhelmed, leading to long waits for results and robbing individuals and public health officials of crucial information. No single breakthrough will solve the problem…

Russia is prematurely declaring victory in the race for a vaccine against Covid-19, with potentially dangerous consequences for the Russian population. President Vladimir Putin says his government has approved a vaccine and will start inoculating teachers and medical workers this month, before…