While there were a lot of stocks that shot up big time as we started the new week, investors were hit with a fair bit of news from the coronavirus vaccine world. In particular, two companies made the headlines. First of which was Merck (NYSE: MRK), which announced it would be giving up on its vaccine candidate after disappointing clinical results. The second company making waves was Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), which shot up after announcing it was working on a new booster shot for a new COVID strain emerging onto the scene.
Merck said on Monday that it would be halting the development of not just one, but two separate COVID-19 vaccine its was working on. Despite best efforts, clinical results were simply too disappointing to justify continued development. Scientists involved in the research expressed confusion as to why the vaccine candidates weren’t effective, although they were quite safe. Merck also decided not to provide the study results to the public, either.
While there were over a hundred separate vaccine candidates in testing at one point, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the number has shrunk to around 60 at the moment. Just a fraction of those have finished clinical testing as of January 26th.
One of the first companies to successfully launch a COVID vaccine was Moderna. Now, the company stated that it’s preparing a new vaccine in order to counteract another strain emerging from South Africa, especially since its current vaccine appears to be less effective in mitigating potential symptoms.
An earlier, faster-spreading variant had emerged in England several weeks ago, which already prompted companies to try and develop a new vaccine. Now, however, this so-called South African strain appears to be more infectious than normal, according to mainstream news outlets, albeit less dangerous.
At the moment, health authorities have said that they haven’t seen any reported cases of this newer strain in the U.S. at the moment. However, that isn’t expected to last long, with the new Biden administration already restricting travel to South Africa in response.
Shares of Moderna shot up around 9.0% over the course of the day in response to the news, whereas Merck didn’t really move much despite the bad news. While Moderna has become one of the best-performing biotech stocks on the market, a lot of investors think the company has peaked now, with the revenue potential of its vaccine already baked into its lofty valuation. Merck, on the other hand, hasn’t really done that well over the past year. Most analysts remain cautiously optimistic, although traders aren’t nearly as excited about the pharmaceutical giant’s prospects.
Moderna Company Profile
Moderna Inc is engaged in creating transformative medicines based on messenger RNA, or mRNA. It transfers the information stored in the genes to the cellular machinery that makes all the proteins required for life. The firm is developing therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases. Its clinical trials include mRNA-1647, mRNA-1893, mRNA-4157, and mRNA-2416 among others. – Warrior Trading News
