Max Nisen

The US just took a step beyond funding Covid-vaccine research toward actively securing shots. On Wednesday, the government signed an agreement with Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech securing 100 million doses of their vaccine candidate for $1.95 billion, payable if the inoculation succeeds in clinical…

After months of hype, the world finally has human trial data from a front-running vaccine collaboration between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc. Spoiler alert, it’s good news. The data, published in The Lancet Monday, showed that the vaccine produced an encouraging immune response…

Health-care earnings season is firmly here, with reports now in from three pillars of the sector: pharmacy giant Walgreen Boots Alliance Inc., health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. and drug-and-device conglomerate Johnson & Johnson. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, each had a singular…

The recent spike in US Covid-19 infections has mercifully been accompanied by a declining death count. There were days in the spring when the country had half the number of cases but twice as many deaths. Now, at least, the US is testing more widely. And even though death is a lagging…

As the entire world awaits a vaccine against Covid-19, the US Food and Drug Administration is explicitly rejecting one of the fastest possible paths to releasing one. That’s a good thing. On Tuesday, the agency issued guidance on the standards it will use in evaluating and approving a vaccine…

An alarming chart has been making the rounds. It illustrates the poor job the US has done in containing Covid-19 compared to the European Union, a bigger region of independent countries that suffered an earlier outbreak. Why the big difference? What is America doing wrong? There are a lot of…

The fast pace at which various laboratories are working on vaccines against Covid-19 carries both promise and peril. Last week, Moderna Therapeutics Inc. announced the first reported data from human trials, and they are positive. That’s good news, and it arrived sooner than expected. But the parts…

The world is beginning to loosen restrictions that have been put in place to limit the spread of Covid-19. Leaders of countries, states and cities are finding they have little choice but to return to economic activity well before an effective vaccine or treatment for the disease is available. This…