Happy Friday! We hope all our readers who are celebrating have a wonderful and very merry Christmas! 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• One day after authorizing Pfizer’s Paxlovid COVID-19 antiviral pill, the Food and Drug Administration announced it had issued an emergency use authorization for Merck’s COVID-19 antiviral, molnupiravir, for adults at “high risk” for severe COVID-19 and “for whom alternative COVID-19 treatment options authorized by the FDA are not accessible or clinically appropriate.” Molnupiravir was found in clinical trials to be significantly less effective than other therapeutics, but will be available in early January.

• Another measure of inflation—the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index—hit a 39-year high in November, with the Bureau of Economic Analysis announcing yesterday it increased 5.7 percent year-over-year in November, and 4.7 percent year-over-year when excluding food and energy prices.

• President Joe Biden formally signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act—which bans imports of products made with forced labor from China’s Xinjiang region—into law on Thursday.