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A contaminant found in a batch of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccines delivered to Japan is believed to be a metallic particle, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported, citing sources at the health ministry. ... Spanish pharma company Rovi, which bottles Moderna vaccines for markets other than the United States, said the contamination could be due to a manufacturing issue on a production line. (8/27)

Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Thursday a deal with Brazilian pharmaceutical company Eurofarma to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine for distribution in Latin America. Latin American countries have struggled to vaccinate their populations due to a low supply of doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. The new deal would boost local manufacturing and distribution of doses. (Saric, 8/26)

The world economy is set to lose trillions in GDP because of delayed vaccination timelines, with developing economies bearing most of the losses due to the uneven rollout, the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report. Countries that are not able to inoculate 60% of their population by mid-2022 will lose $2.3 trillion between 2022 and 2025, the EIU predicted. “Emerging countries will shoulder around two-thirds of these losses, further delaying their economic convergence with more developed countries,” wrote Agathe Demarais, the EIU’s global forecasting director. (Jacob, 8/27)

China’s inactivated vaccines maintained their protective power during a recent outbreak of Covid-19 in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, providing real world evidence about their ability to stave off the highly infectious delta variant. The immunizations from state-owned Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech Ltd. had a combined effectiveness of 70% against pneumonia caused by Covid and completely protected against severe disease caused by the delta variant, according to a pre-print study from researchers with the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The paper hasn’t yet been reviewed by outside experts. (8/27)

China's coronavirus vaccination drive has surpassed 2 billion doses, authorities announced Friday, but heavy-handed tactics intended to boost inoculation rates are triggering backlash in some areas. As of Thursday, more than 889 million people had been fully vaccinated, with more than two billion shots of domestically-produced Covid-19 administered in total, an official at the National Health Commission said at a press conference Friday. That puts China on par with the United Kingdom and ahead of the United States in terms of the percentage of its population that are now fully vaccinated. (Gan and George, 8/27)