No­vo Nordisk’s weight loss pill is off to an im­pres­sive start af­ter less than three weeks on the mar­ket.

Pre­scrip­tions are quick­ly ramp­ing up, in­creas­ing by rough­ly 500% in the pill’s sec­ond week, an­a­lysts said Fri­day. BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets re­port­ed more than 18,000 to­tal pre­scrip­tions for oral We­govy last week, cit­ing da­ta from the con­sult­ing firm IQVIA.

Those fig­ures may not show the full pic­ture, as an­a­lysts say the IQVIA da­ta might not cap­ture cash-pay pa­tients ac­cess­ing the pill through Novo­Care or tele­health part­ners. Cash-pay pa­tients could ac­count for a large por­tion, or even a ma­jor­i­ty, of pre­scrip­tions, TD Cowen an­a­lysts wrote to in­vestors.

Even so, the TD an­a­lysts re­main cau­tious, not­ing that “one week does not make a trend.”

Fresh off health of­fi­cials’ sweep­ing re­make of the US child­hood vac­cine sched­ule, two mem­bers of a key CDC pan­el are de­pict­ing dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the com­mit­tee’s work mov­ing for­ward.

Com­ments made this week by Robert Mal­one and Kirk Mil­hoan, both mem­bers of the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Im­mu­niza­tion Prac­tices, mud­dy what the pan­el’s pri­or­i­ties will be in 2026.

Mal­one, one of the most vo­cal mem­bers on ACIP, sug­gest­ed on a call Wednes­day with al­lies of HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the group will try to lim­it the avail­abil­i­ty of mR­NA vac­cines. Mean­while, Mil­hoan, ACIP's chair­man, said in a pod­cast re­leased Thurs­day that the group's goal is­n't to take any prod­ucts away.

The Eu­ro­pean Union un­veiled de­tails of a pi­lot project that aims to ac­cel­er­ate the time­line for start­ing new multi­na­tion­al clin­i­cal tri­als.

The vol­un­tary pi­lot, called FAST‑EU, will fea­ture a max­i­mum 10‑week (70‑day) time­line from drug­mak­er sub­mis­sion to fi­nal de­ci­sion — about a month short­er than the cur­rent EU time­line when there's di­a­logue with the spon­sor.

The Biotech Act cre­at­ed the pi­lot and will ul­ti­mate­ly short­en multi­na­tion­al tri­al re­view time­lines from 75 to 47 days if there is no re­quest for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, and from 106 days to 76 days when there is a re­quest, ac­cord­ing to the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion.

The pi­lot aims to help Eu­rope in­crease its glob­al share of com­mer­cial­ly-spon­sored clin­i­cal tri­als, which has de­clined from 22% in 2013 to 12% in 2023, ac­cord­ing to the com­mis­sion.

→ Eli Lil­ly is one of many large phar­mas that have hired dis­placed or dis­grun­tled FDA of­fi­cials in the past year, and Karin Bok is its lat­est pick­up. Bok re­signed in No­vem­ber as deputy di­rec­tor for the FDA’s Of­fice of Vac­cines Re­search and Re­view, and now her LinkedIn page in­di­cates that she’s cur­rent­ly the CSO for in­fec­tious dis­eases at Lil­ly. Ex-CBER chief Pe­ter Marks re­cent­ly joined Lil­ly as head of in­fec­tious dis­eases, and Rachael Ana­tol is in charge of glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy for the In­di­anapo­lis phar­ma’s ge­net­ic med­i­cine unit af­ter she was oust­ed as deputy su­per of­fice di­rec­tor at the Of­fice of Ther­a­peu­tic Prod­ucts. Lil­ly told End­points News that it had no fur­ther com­ment on Bok's ap­point­ment.

The CEOs of the biggest US health in­sur­ers de­fend­ed their busi­ness prac­tices be­fore a House hear­ing Thurs­day on the soar­ing cost of health cov­er­age.

Re­pub­li­can and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers slammed in­sur­ers for hik­ing pre­mi­ums, de­lay­ing care, steer­ing pa­tients to their own busi­ness­es, and sti­fling com­pe­ti­tion. They ques­tioned the CEOs about claims de­nials, ex­ec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion, and their prac­tice of buy­ing up dif­fer­ent pieces of the health­care in­dus­try, but left them lit­tle time to give sub­stan­tive an­swers.

Mean­while, the CEOs of Unit­ed­Health Group, El­e­vance Health, Cigna, CVS Health and As­cendi­un, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Blue Shield of Cal­i­for­nia, stuck to old talk­ing points they pre­viewed in pre­pared tes­ti­monies that were pub­lished Wednes­day, dis­cussing how they’re shift­ing to­ward pay­ing for out­comes in­stead of the vol­ume of ser­vices or­dered, and sim­pli­fy­ing the pri­or au­tho­riza­tion process.