Throughout 2020, China’s drive to introduce more and newer drugs to the market did not slow but was rather accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But can people afford them?

Rare disease and cancer treatments are front and center in the latest batch of China new drug approvals, while biosimilars are expected to move into the spotlight.

In this edition of the Coronavirus Notebook, an EU consortium uses a supercomputing platform to identify the generic drug raloxifene as a potential COVID-19 treatment, and the World Health Organization proposes a set of principles for distributing a coronavirus vaccine at global level.

Claims circulated on social media that its Cebion supplement could prevent coronavirus has led Italy's Dompé to take legal action.