The CVS drug store company and pharmaceutical companies will pay Florida a combined $860 million as part of the settlement of an opioid epidemic case, state officials said Wednesday.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said CVS Health Corp. and CVS Pharmacy Inc. will pay the state $484 million. Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd. agreed to pay $195 million and Allergan PLC more than $134 million.
In addition, Tevan will provide to Florida about $84 million of its Narcan nasal spray used to treat overdose victims. Another company, Endo Health Solutions, is also settling for $65 million, Moody said.
“The opioid epidemic is wreaking havoc on Florida families,” Moody said in a news release. “The monies secured from CVS, Teva, Allergan and Endo will help further our efforts to remediate the harm and suffering of Floridians.”
The money from CVS, Moody added, will be divided between the state and Florida cities and counties, which were beset by opioid overdoses and illicit drug use during the “pill mill” epidemic of a decade ago. The money must be spent on tackling the opioid crisis.
The opioid epidemic has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades, counting those from prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and generic oxycodone as well as illicit drugs such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl.
In the 2010s, state and local governments filed thousands of lawsuits against companies that make and distribute the drugs seeking to hold them accountable. A handful of cases have gone to trial, but many more have been settling, particularly over the last year.
The Florida settlements leave only Walgreens Co. as a defendant in a lawsuit set for trial April 5 in Pasco County Circuit Court. Florida has previously obtained millions of dollars in opioid settlements involving McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., Johnson & Johnson Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma has a tentative nationwide deal that includes $6 billion in cash from members of the Sackler family who own the company; drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson have finalized settlements totaling $26 billion.
Other drugmakers, including Teva and Endo, have been settling state-by-state as they did in Florida.
In all, settlements, civil and criminal penalties since 2007 have totaled over $45 billion, according to an Associated Press tally.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
BioNTech, the German pharmaceutical company that teamed with Pfizer to develop the first widely used COVID-19 vaccine, on Wednesday reported strong quarterly earnings growth on pandemic-fueled demand.
The company posted net profit of nearly 3.2 billion euros ($3.6 billion) for the final three months of 2021, up from 367 million euros in the same period the previous year. Earnings per share rose to 12.18 euros from 1.43 euros a year ago.
Quarterly revenue rose to 5.5 billion euros from 345.4 million euros previously.
“Our 2021 COVID-19 vaccine revenues were significantly influenced by the extraordinary circumstances of the ongoing pandemic,” Chief Financial Officer Jens Holstein said in a press release.
Vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, marketed as Comirnaty, started in December 2020. BioNTech, based in the city of Mainz near Frankfurt, said about 2.6 billion doses of the vaccine had been delivered last year.
BioNTech said it has signed orders for 2.4 billion more doses so far this year, which it expects will earn the company 13 billion to 17 billion euros in revenue.
The company, which has said it will pour windfall profits from the mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine back into developing other drugs to fight cancer and other diseases, plans to boost its spending on research and development this year by half, to between 1.4 billion and 1.5 billion euros.
BioNTech said it’s proposing a special cash dividend of 2 euros per share and will also buy back up to $1.5 billion in shares because “we would like to share our successes with shareholders.”
For the full year, the company posted net profit of 10.3 billion euros on 19 billion in revenue.
The number of people killed by the coronavirus surged by more than 40% last week, likely due to changes in how COVID-19 deaths were reported across the Americas and by newly adjusted figures from India, according to a World Health Organization report released Wednesday.
In its latest weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said the number of new coronavirus cases fell everywhere, including in WHO’s Western Pacific region, where they had been rising since December.
About 10 million new COVID-19 infections and more than 45,000 deaths were reported worldwide over the past week, following a 23% drop in fatalities the week before.
WHO has said repeatedly that COVID-19 case counts are likely a vast underestimate of the coronavirus’ prevalence. The agency cautioned countries in recent weeks against dropping their comprehensive testing and other surveillance measures, saying that doing so would cripple efforts to accurately track the spread of the virus.
“Data are becoming progressively less representative, less timely and less robust,” WHO said. “This inhibits our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it is spreading and how it is evolving: information and analyses that remain critical to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”
The agency warned that less surveillance would particularly harm efforts to detect new COVID variants and undermine a potential response.
Numerous countries across Europe, North America and elsewhere recently lifted nearly all their COVID-19 protocols, relying on high levels of vaccination to prevent another infection spike even as the more infectious omicron subvariant BA.2 is causing an uptick in new cases.
British authorities have said that while they expect to see more cases, they have not seen an equivalent rise in hospitalizations and deaths.
Despite the global decline in reported cases, China locked down Shanghai this week to try to curb an omicron outbreak that has caused the country’s biggest wave of disease since the virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019.
U.S. officials expanded the use of vaccine boosters Tuesday as regulators said Americans ages 50 and older can get a second booster at least four months after their last vaccination.
An AP-NORC poll, meanwhile found that less than half of Americans now regularly wear face masks, avoid crowds and skip non-essential travel.
To administer this COVID test, Todd Kautz had to lay on his belly in the snow and worm his upper body into the narrow den of a hibernating black bear. Training a light on its snout, Kautz carefully slipped a long cotton swab into the bear’s nostrils five times.
For postdoctoral researcher Kautz and a team of other wildlife experts, tracking the coronavirus means freezing temperatures, icy roads, trudging through deep snow and getting uncomfortably close to potentially dangerous wildlife.
They’re testing bears, moose, deer and wolves on a Native American reservation in the remote north woods about 5 miles from Canada. Like researchers around the world, they are trying to figure out how, how much and where wildlife is spreading the virus.
Scientists are concerned that the virus could evolve within animal populations – potentially spawning dangerous viral mutants that could jump back to people, spread among us and reignite what for now seems to some people like a waning crisis.
The coronavirus pandemic has served as a stark and tragic example of how closely animal health and human health are linked. While the origins of the virus have not been proven, many scientists say it likely jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another species that was being sold live in Wuhan, China.
And now the virus has been confirmed in wildlife in at least 24 U.S. states, including Minnesota. Recently, an early Canadian study showed someone in nearby Ontario likely contracted a highly mutated strain from a deer.
“If the virus can establish itself in a wild animal reservoir, it will always be out there with the threat to spill back into the human population,” said University of Minnesota researcher Matthew Aliota, who is working with the Grand Portage Reservation team.
E.J. Isaac, a fish and wildlife biologist for the reservation that’s home to the Grand Portage Ojibwe, said he expects the stakes to get even higher with the start of spring, as bears wake from hibernation and deer and wolves roam to different regions.
“If we consider that there are many species and they’re all intermingling to some extent, their patterns and their movements can exponentially increase the amount of transmission that could occur,” he said.
INTO THE WILD
Their research is meant to ward off such unwelcome surprises. But it carries its own set of risks.
Seth Moore, who directs the reservation biology and environment department, recently almost got bitten by a wolf.
And they sometimes team with a crew from the Texas-based company Heliwild to capture animals from the air. One chilly late-winter afternoon, the men climbed into a small helicopter with no side doors that lifted above the treetops. Flying low, they quickly spotted a deer in a forest clearing. They targeted the animal from the air with a net gun and dropped Moore off.
Wind whipped at his face as he worked in deep snow to quickly swab the deer’s nose for COVID, put on a tracking collar and collect blood and other biological samples for different research.
The men capture moose in much the same way, using tranquilizer darts instead of nets. They trap wolves and deer either from the air or on the ground, and trap bears on the ground.
They knew of the young male bear they recently tested because they had already been tracking it. To get to the den, they had to take snowmobiles to the bottom of a hill then hike a narrow, winding path in snow shoes.
When Kautz crawled part-way into the den, a colleague held his feet to pull him out quickly if necessary. The team also gave the animal a drug to keep it sleeping and another later to counteract the effects of the first.
To minimize the risk of exposing animals to COVID, the men are fully vaccinated and boosted and get tested frequently.
The day after testing the bear, Isaac packed their samples to send to Aliota’s lab in Saint Paul. The veterinary and biomedical researcher hopes to learn not just which animals are getting infected but also whether certain animals are acting as “bridge species” to bring it to others. Testing may later be expanded to red foxes and racoons.
It’s also possible the virus hasn’t reached this remote location – yet. Since it’s already circulating in the wilderness of Minnesota and nearby states, Aliota said it’s only a matter of time.
LOOKING FOR MUTANTS
Close contact between humans and animals has allowed the virus to overcome built-in barriers to spread between species.
To infect any living thing, the virus must get into its cells, which isn’t always easy. Virology expert David O’Connor likens the process to opening a “lock” with the virus’ spike protein “key.”
“Different species have different-looking locks, and some of those locks are not going to be pickable by the key,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist said.
But other locks are similar enough for the virus to enter an animal’s cells and make copies of itself. As it does, it can randomly mutate and still have a key that fits in the human lock. That allows it to leap back to humans through close contact with live animals, scientists believe.
Although spillback is rare, it only takes one person to bring a mutated virus into the realm of humans.
Some think the highly mutated omicron variant emerged from an animal rather than an immune-compromised human, as many believe. Virologist Marc Johnson of the University of Missouri is one of them, and now sees animals as “a potential source of pi,” the Greek letter that may be used to designate the next dangerous coronavirus variant.
Johnson and his colleagues found strange coronavirus lineages in New York City sewage with mutations rarely seen elsewhere, which he believes came from animals, perhaps rodents.
What scientists are most concerned about is that current or future variants could establish themselves and multiply widely within a reservoir species.
One possibility: white-tailed deer. Scientists found the coronavirus in a third of deer sampled in Iowa between September 2020 and January 2021. Others found COVID-19 antibodies in a third of deer tested in Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. Infected deer generally have no symptoms. Testing in many other wild species has been limited or absent.
“It’s possible that the virus is already perhaps circulating in multiple animals,” said virology expert Suresh Kuchipudi of Pennsylvania State University, an author of the Iowa deer study. If unmonitored, the virus could leave people “completely blindsided,” he said.
CAN IT BE STOPPED?
Ultimately, experts say the only way to stop viruses from jumping back and forth between animals and humans — extending this pandemic or sparking a new one — is to tackle big problems like habitat destruction and illegal wildlife sales.
“We are encroaching on animal habitats like we have never before in history,” Aliota said. “Spillover events from wild animals into humans are, unfortunately I think, going to increase in both frequency and scope.”
To combat that threat, three international organizations — the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization — are urging countries to make COVID surveillance in animals a priority.
In Grand Portage, Aliota’s collaborators continue to do their part by testing as many animals as they can catch.
With icy Lake Superior sparkling through the evergreens, Isaac slipped his hand beneath the netting of a deer trap. A colleague straddling the animal lifted its head off the snowy ground so that Isaac could swab its nostrils.
The young buck briefly lurched its head forward, but kept still long enough for Isaac to get what he needed.
“Nicely done,” his colleague said as Isaac put the sample into a vial.
When they were finished, they gently lifted the trap to let the deer go. It bounded into the vast forest without looking back, disappearing into the snowy shadows.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
As millions of Shanghai residents line up for coronavirus tests in the closed-down metropolis, authorities are promising tax cuts for shopkeepers and to keep its busy port functioning to limit disruptions to industry and trade.
This week’s shutdown of most activities in China’s most populous city to contain virus outbreaks jolted financial markets already on edge about Russia’s war on Ukraine, higher U.S. interest rates and a Chinese economic slowdown.
The ruling Communist Party is trying to fine-tune its “zero tolerance” pandemic strategy to rein in job losses and other costs to the world’s second-largest economy.
The Shanghai government has announced tax refunds, cuts in rent and low-cost loans for small businesses. A government statement Tuesday promised to “stabilize jobs” and “optimize the business environment.”
At the Shanghai port, the world’s busiest, operations were normal and managers made extra efforts to ensure vessels “can call normally,” state TV reported. The port serves the Yangtze River Delta, one of the world’s busiest manufacturing regions with makers of smartphones, auto components and other goods.
Operations at Shanghai airports and train stations were normal, according to the online news outlet The Paper. Bus service into and out of the city of 26 million was suspended earlier. Visitors are required to show a negative virus test.
Abroad, the biggest potential impact on China’s Asian neighbors and the rest of the world is likely to come from developments that chill demand in the world’s most populous consumer market, economists said.
China is the biggest trading partner for all of its neighbors, including Japan and South Korea.
Economic growth already was forecast to decline from last year’s 8.1% due to a government campaign to cut corporate debt and other challenges unrelated to the pandemic. The ruling party’s official target is 5.5%, but forecasters say even that looks hard to reach and will require stimulus spending.
From oil and coal to electronics components and consumer goods, China is a huge market for most industries.
“China is the biggest single consumer of practically everything. It matters outside China,” said Rob Carnell, chief Asia economist for ING. “If China’s consumption is getting knocked down by COVID, it is going to be something that filters down the supply chain and affects countries in the region.”
Louis Kuijs, chief Asia-Pacific economist for S&P; Global Ratings said Chinese officials are trying to ensure goods get to customers and protect supply chains. He noted that after previous shutdowns, factories caught up with orders by working overtime.
Despite fears that lockdowns in China will slow the recovery from last year’s global supply chain problems, “The impact on supply chains is not as big as many outside observers fear,” Kuijs said. “These restrictions tend to have a larger impact on spending and the demand side in China.”
Still, the impact on Shanghai should be “relatively muted” if the city contains its outbreak as well as the southern business center of Shenzhen did earlier, said Carnell.
Shenzhen, a tech and finance center of 17.5 million people, imposed a similar citywide shutdown in mid-March and reopened a week later.
Employees of financial industries can work from home, while automakers and other big manufacturers can have workers live at factories in a “closed loop system” isolating them from contact with the outside.
General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG said their factories in Shanghai were operating normally. GM said in an email it was carrying out “contingency plans on a global basis” with suppliers to reduce COVID-related uncertainties.
In China’s northeast, BMW Group said factories of its joint venture with state-owned Brilliance Auto in the city of Changchun suspended production March 24 following an outbreak there.
Thousands of stock traders and other finance employees were sleeping in their offices to avoid contact with outsiders, the newspaper Daily Economic News reported. It said the Shanghai Stock Exchange was functioning normally with a reduced staff in a “closed office.”
The benchmark Shanghai Composite index was up 1.3% early Wednesday. Most other regional markets also advanced.
Nearby, the riverfront Bund, Shanghai’s most famous vista, was quiet and empty of its usual crowds of pedestrians.
Most restaurants were only allowed to server diners who ordered via mobile phone and waited outside to collect meals. Visitors to shopping malls were required to wear masks and register using a smartphone app.
A bigger threat to industry and trade looms if anti-disease restrictions disrupt activity at the Shanghai port.
It serves one of the world’s busiest manufacturing regions, with makers of smartphones, auto components, solar equipment, home appliances and other goods. Shanghai handles the equivalent of 140,000 cargo containers a day.
“If the port is closed, there would be even more dislocation, but it’s not like everything is fine now,” said Carnell. “It’s just yet another thing we wouldn’t need.”
Last year, a one-month slowdown at another major port, Yantian in Shenzhen, caused a backlog of thousands of shipping containers and sent shockwaves through global supply chains.
In Shanghai, truck drivers delivering goods were required to show a negative virus test within the past 48 hours and an electronic “handover slip.” But deliveries continued.
The shudders in markets seen earlier in the week might be an exaggerated “knee jerk reaction” that doesn’t reflect the “true reality of the situation,” but investors already were uneasy about China and the global economy, said Michael Every of Rabobank.
“We have a whole mountain of problems to worry about, and this is just one foothill among many,” said Every. “If that’s all it is, a COVID lockdown, it’s not difficult to look in recent history books and see how it plays out. But this interfaces with a lot of other issues.”
Twenty-one states with Republican attorneys general sued Tuesday to halt the federal government’s requirement that people wear masks on planes, trains, ferries and other public transportation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawsuit, announced by Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody and filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, contends that the mask mandate exceeds the authority of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The mandate in its current form may be in effect only a few weeks more. The CDC recently extended it until April 18 while also indicating it is weighing scaling back the rules for a more targeted approach.
Still, Florida and the other states are pressing on with the lawsuit, which comes amid a partisan divide over the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and issues of government control versus individual rights.
“It is well past time to get rid of this unnecessary mandate and get back to normal life,” said DeSantis, a Republican who has persistently challenged federal mask mandates including those involving cruise lines, schools, private businesses and other entities.
The CDC rule, effective Feb. 1, 2021, requires “the wearing of masks by people on public transportation conveyances or on the premises of transportation hubs,” according to the agency website. The rule has been relaxed somewhat, to end requirements for certain buses, but was recently extended until at least April 18 for domestic and international travel in general.
Moody, a Republican and former Tampa judge, said in a news release that the travel mask mandates “are frustrating travelers and causing chaos on public transportation.”
That appeared to be a reference to a spate of well-publicized confrontations between flight attendants and passengers over the mask requirement on commercial aircraft. It’s not clear if these incidents are isolated or widespread, and if masks are the only issue. Some are clearly alcohol-related or a mental health problem.
Also, perhaps underscoring the partisan divide on masks, both DeSantis and Moody mentioned Democratic President Joe Biden several times in their statements against the travel mandate.
The Atlanta-based CDC did not immediately respond to a phone call and email requesting comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks to immediately halt the CDC travel mask rule and asks for costs and attorneys’ fees. There have been similar lawsuits filed in individual states before this latest one.
Besides Florida, the states filing the new travel mask lawsuit as of Tuesday were:
— Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
