COVID-19 News, Member News

Hogan Lovells | COVID-19 Report for Life Sciences and Health Care Companies

The COVID-19 Report is a compilation of coronavirus news, analysis, and insights from around the world to help life sciences and health care companies stay current in this challenging time.

In Tuesday’s Report: U.S. Senate to vote on relief package, an analysis of how data protection principles relate to vaccine passports, and a preview of a webinar series on the FinTech Strategic Review in the UK.

Tuesday, 2 March 2021

  • The Hogan Lovells Government Relations and Public Affairs group is tracking all of the latest developments in the U.S. Congress and relevant news stories. The U.S. surpassed 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Monday. The House Budget Committee met to start marking up the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The committee aims for the House to have a floor vote to pass the legislation by Friday or Saturday. The Senate will vote this week on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Monday. Nearly two dozen House progressives on Monday called on Vice President Harris to overturn the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that a $15 minimum wage could not be included in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. The Senate Finance Committee will vote on the nomination of Xavier Becerra on Wednesday. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday said that he would take the newly approved Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and urged Americans to take whichever vaccine shot is available to them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s temporary eviction moratorium is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Thursday. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is allowing Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine vials to be transported and stored at normal pharmaceutical freezer temperatures for up to two weeks. Read about these developments here: 26 Feb.; 25 Feb.; and 1 Mar. (Authored by Ivan Zapien)

  • As we approach the second year of the pandemic, governments and ethics councils are now grappling with the thorny issue of vaccine passports. Will we need them? Will they be reliable? Are they fair? These are familiar questions to anyone dealing with personal data because their answers have much to do with data protection. How can we make vaccine passports play a fair and safe role in our uncertain future? Online here we analyze how data protection principles can help answer ethical questions surrounding vaccine passports. (Authored by Eduardo Ustaran)
  • We are now at an inflection point. COVID-19 has fast forwarded the digitalization of businesses and, following its departure from the EU, the UK now has a free hand to shape its regulatory environment. This is an opportunity to develop further a nurturing, and efficient, environment for financial technology – underpinned by gold standard regulation which maintains the perfect balance between risk management and freedom to innovate. Hogan Lovells is running a webinar series on the FinTech Strategic Review (Policy and Regulation Chapter). Our first webinar is a virtual panel discussion covering key findings from the Policy and Regulation chapter. This panel discussion will be followed by a series of webinars in the next couple of weeks focusing on Cryptoassets, Payments, Digital ID, Open Finance and Artificial Intelligence issues in the UK. Further information is available here. (Authored by Rachel Kent)

Author:

  • Aaron Armstrong

Compliments of Hogan Lovells – a member of the EACCNY.