One of the more surprising gains just before the weekend came from a small vaccine developer that seems to have hit a clinical homerun. Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) announced that its new COVID-19 vaccine was 89.3% effective in protecting patients from the newer coronavirus strains floating around out there.
While this particular study was pretty strong, the results were marred slightly by a separate study among South African patients. This second study tested the newer, more dangerous strain that emerged in the country recently, showing just a 49.4% effectiveness rate. Overall, that’s pretty poor, but Novavax has said that it was developing a booster shot specifically for this particular strain.
In both cases, clinical trial results, from a pure percentage perspective, were inferior to other COVID-19 vaccines developed and approved right now. Moderna’s (NASDAQ: MRNA) vaccine, for example, had an efficacy rate in the mid-90s. However, these results were from the original COVIDS-19 strain, which supposedly isn’t as difficult to treat as these newer variants popping up around the world.
“We now have a vaccine, the first vaccine that’s shown efficacy not only in the prototype Covid-19 original strain, but in two variant strains, one in the U.K. one in South Africa,” said Novavax CEO Stanley Erck in an interview prior to the weekend. “It’s the only data that shows we can get efficacy against all three.”
All of this is pretty big news for Novavax, especially since the company has never before released a vaccine to the market. The one potential hiccup is that this clinical data hasn’t been vetted by outside medical experts, a process that needs to happen before it can be published in medical journals.
Shares of Novavax shot up around 65.7% just before the weekend in response to the news. While a lot of this has to do with the news itself, it wouldn’t be surprising if the ongoing trader fanaticism with GameStop (NYSE: GME) and similar stocks could be affecting Novavax as well. With brokerages trying to stop trading on these stocks, traders involved in these companies are looking for other hot companies to take advantage of. Thanks to this announcement, Novavax definitely fits the criteria.
The real question is whether or not these traders are going to roll with Novavax going forward into February as a GameStop alternative. There’s definitely short interest surrounding Novavax, but hardly the same as some of the other stocks mentioned already. Keep this stock on your watchlist going into Monday morning, but don’t necessarily get your hopes up either.
Novavax Company Profile
Novavax Inc is a biotechnology company that develops vaccines. The company works in the clinical stage of development with a focus on delivering novel products that prevent a broad range of diseases. Novavax works together with its wholly owned Swedish subsidiary to produce vaccine candidates to respond to both known and emerging disease threats. The company believes its vaccine technology has the potential to be applied broadly to a wide variety of human infectious diseases. Novavax develops product candidates geared toward all age demographics of the general population. – Warrior Trading News
