Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is providing $600 million in funding to produce new at-home COVID-19 tests and is restarting a website allowing Americans to again order up to four free tests per household — aiming to prevent possible shortages during a rise in coronavirus cases that has typically come during colder months. The Department of Health and Human Services says orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov starting Sept. 25, and that no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service.

The national COVID-19 emergency is drawing to a close, which means certain treatments and tests that have previously been available without cost is soon to change. However, working on effective vaccines and therapies for COVID-19 is far from over. The federal government recently announced plans to spend over $5 billion in order to speed up new vaccines and treatments, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson and a Biden administration official. The plan, called Project NextGen, was first announced in the Washington Post on April 10 and aims to provide better protection from future coronaviruses that...

The United States government presided over what is being called the “biggest fraud in a generation” during the Covid pandemic. According to the latest reports on the Covid relief program, between $163 billion and $400 billion out of a total of $900 billion in funding has gone missing.

Pfizer’s chief financial officer has described the Covid pandemic as a 'multi-billion dollar franchise' — and expects profit to continue. David Denton told investors in an earnings call last week his company's vaccine and antiviral would still be 'relevant for many years to come'. The CFO said he expects the Covid virus to be 'somewhat like a flu... but more deadly' — meaning therapeutics will still have a massive role in controlling the virus. The company announced last month it will triple the price of its shot to up to $130 per dose next year — a far cry from...

Moderna is taking Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech to court, claiming the rival drugmakers copied its technology in developing their COVID-19 vaccine. In documents filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and in Germany, Moderna claims Pfizer and BioNTech violated its intellectual property rights on key parts of its messenger RNA technology, which it had patents on from 2010 to 2016. "We believe that Pfizer and BioNTech unlawfully copied Moderna's inventions, and they have continued to use them without permission," Shannon Thyme Klinger, chief legal officer for Moderna, a biotechnology startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said Friday in a statement. Pfizer...

Study found that taxpayers shelled out $4 for every $1 in wages and benefits received by workers from the Paycheck Protection Program. Taxpayers paid $4 for every $1 in wages and benefits received by workers in jobs saved by the federal government’s pandemic Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The Fed study also found PPP didn’t support jobs at risk of disappearing, and money flowed disproportionately to wealthier households. “The PPP was a very large and very timely fiscal-policy intervention, saving about 3 million jobs at its peak in...

Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla has said he is working on the creation of a new vaccine against COVID-19 that could be taken annually in order for people to become more “compliant” in taking COVID vaccines. Bourla made the comment at a press briefing organized by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), which took place Wednesday and where he discussed the creation of a new COVID vaccine.An annual vaccine to boost ‘compliance’“What the world really needs is a vaccine that can last a year,” stated Bourla. The head of the pharmaceutical giant described this idea as “the optimal...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants the federal government to spend $45 billion on yet another COVID-19 stimulus package, nearly double what President Joe Biden’s administration had asked for in the last omnibus spending bill. Biden had initially asked for $22.5 billion in new emergency funding for the pandemic and Democrats had compromised to a $15.6 billion figure after Republicans objected. But even that compromise amount was cut from the $1.5 trillion omnibus bill that Congress passed last week, averting a government shutdown. On Thursday, Pelosi told reporters that she wants the Biden administration to ask Congress for even more...

Biden administration struck a deal a German company to build a factory in Wisconsin to increase production of COVID-19 testing kits MilliporeSigma's new factory will pump out 83.3 million tests per month – but the facility won't be operational for another three years 'Construction is expected to begin the second half of 2022 and initial planning and preparatory work is already underway,' a MilliporeSigma spokesperson said They told DailyMail.com: 'We estimate that the facility will be capable of providing lateral flow membranes in the latter part of 2024' Fuels speculation the administration thinks testing will still be needed in 2025...