Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Basking In The Moment, Pfizer Debuts New Logo
Pfizer鈥檚 got a new blue. Two new blues in fact, with the company鈥檚 rebrand and new logo design. Gone is the staid blue oval pill background, replaced by a two-tone blue double helix spiral. It鈥檚 the first significant visual redesign for Pfizer in 70 years since the company began using the blue oval background. The tagline outlining Pfizer鈥檚 purpose, 鈥淏reakthroughs that change patients' lives,鈥 remains the same. (Snyder Bulik, 1/5)
In other pharmaceutical and biotech news 鈥
The FDA recently added new supplies, including pipette tips and micro pipettes, to its medical device shortage list.聽The agency also changed some of the categories for the list, which includes the reason the supply is in shortage and gives an estimate on how long the shortage is expected to last.聽(Anderson, 1/5)
As Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and now AstraZeneca rack up emergency authorizations for their COVID-19 vaccines, the world is racing to聽get shots shipped out and into patients鈥 arms. A聽slew of injection device deals鈥攊nked early during the pandemic鈥檚 spread鈥攁re obviously key to that effort. Becton Dickinson, for one, last month surpassed 1 billion pandemic injection device orders globally. Now, as more than 300 million devices arrive in North America, Europe and the Middle East鈥攚ith the rest slated for delivery by the end of the year鈥擝D is leveraging some pandemic know-how gained with the 2009 swine flu, Elizabeth Woody, SVP of public affairs, said in an interview. (Kansteiner, 1/4)
One of the most obvious adaptations to the 鈥渘ew normal鈥 of the COVID-19 pandemic鈥攚hen filming on a set was well nigh impossible鈥攚as the move to animation in advertising. And pharma joined right in. As stay-at-home orders and social distancing made it difficult to get聽people together for TV and video ad production, pharma came up with some clever workarounds. Intra-Cellular Therapies hired actors and their real-life families to act out scenes for its schizophrenia drug聽Caplyta.聽Merck & Co. used existing footage for its awareness spot reminding parents to keep up on their preteen children's wellness exams after聽nearly everything went online. (Klahr Coey, 12/29)