Moncef Slaoui, PhD, the chief advisor of Operation Warp speed, the White House task force to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, said drugmakers developing COVID-19 vaccines will begin to seek FDA emergency approval around Thanksgiving, according to an Oct. 10 MarketWatch interview with the immunologist.

Mallinckrodt has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for all of its U.S. subsidiaries and some international subsidiaries, the company said Oct. 12. 

The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine will most likely bring about the most rapidly developed vaccine in history, but uncertainties still abound when it comes to a potential vaccine's effectiveness, safety and ability to be administered to the world's population.

Moderna will not enforce the patents it gained for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and will license its COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property to other drugmakers after the pandemic is declared over, the drugmaker announced Oct. 8.

Eli Lilly and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will partner to supply the drugmaker's COVID-19 antibody drug to low- and middle-income countries, Eli Lilly said Oct. 8.

Remdesivir shortened COVID-19 patient recovery time by five days, according to final data from a phase 3 trial published Oct. 8 in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

U.S. health officials are working quickly to get an $8 billion plan to provide $200 drug cards to all Medicare patients by Election Day, five health officials told Politico. 

President Donald Trump and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are both urging the FDA to quickly grant an emergency use authorization for Regeneron's antibody drug, which the president received as a treatment for COVID-19, The Washington Post reported. 

In the last two months, six hospitals or health systems have opened or announced plans to open pharmacies: 

Kent State University in Ohio has partnered with CVS Health to provide free COVID-19 testing for all students, faculty and staff starting Oct. 12 through the spring semester. 

Jorge David Gutierrez, a recruiter for Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine trial based in Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, has encountered a significant amount of distrust among the public while trying to enroll participants, he told STAT.

Seventy-two percent of Americans said they would probably or definitely receive a flu shot during the current flu season, according to results released Oct. 8 from a survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Walgreens.

Walgreens will offer expanded clinical services in its pharmacies in Chicago, beginning in the city's underserved neighborhoods on the South Side, the company said Oct. 7. 

Rite Aid will acquire Seattle-based pharmacy chain Bartell Drugs for $95 million, the company announced Oct. 7. 

Regeneron has submitted its experimental COVID-19 antibody treatment to the FDA for emergency use authorization, the drugmaker announced Oct. 7.

Dexamethasone, the steroid drug President Donald Trump was recently prescribed to treat COVID-19, has seen a price increase of 137 percent in the last few months, according to nonprofit drug research firm 46brooklyn. 

M Health Fairview, a Minneapolis-based health system, said it will shut down five of its pharmacies as part of a cost-saving measure to offset losses caused by COVID-19. 

U.K.-based pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline partnered with Nvidia, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based tech company that invented the graphics processing unit, to discover new treatments, the companies announced Oct. 5.

Most older Americans take two or more prescription drugs, but only a small percentage have had a pharmacist review the potential interactions of their medication combinations, according to survey results released Oct. 7 by Michigan Medicine.

Eli Lilly said Oct. 7 that it has submitted a request for an emergency use authorization to the FDA for its COVID-19 antibody drug after clinical trials showed it may be effective to treat patients with high risk for serious outcomes.