Finding a Covid-19 vaccine is the best way to win the battle
against the pandemic and pharmaceutical companies around the globe realize this.
Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before moving to clinical trials. However, since the beginning of the Corona pandemic,
scientists started racing to produce an effective vaccine. The first vaccine-safety
trials on humans started in March, and now 13 have reached the final stages of
testing. While a few vaccines may succeed in stimulating the immune system to
produce effective antibodies against the virus, those vaccines may potentially
prevent infection, but they cannot cure the disease.
The four focal vaccine developers; AstraZeneca, Pfizer,
Moderna, and Gamaleya, have already reported promising phase 3 trial results
against COVID-19. They estimated sufficient doses for more than one-third of
the world’s population by the end of 2021, and a total production capacity of
5.3 billion doses for 2021, which covers between 2.6 billion and 3.1 billion
people, depending on the dosage.
(Vaccines pre-orders for each company)
Most of the capacity is already spoken for, the European
Union with the other five countries have pre-ordered about half of it. Those
countries only account for 13 percent of the global population.
(Countries with the most amount of supply orders)
(Last 3 months volume compared with Dec. 2020)
Pfizer and BioNTech
Pfizer and BioNTech are jointly developing a vaccine. This
partnership has developed over the first quarter of 2020 with the aim to
rapidly advance vaccine development and scale-up manufacturing capacity. It
is expected that the partnership will leverage Pfizer’s broad expertise in
vaccine research and development and regulatory capabilities. Pfizer and
BioNTech will share development costs equally. Initially, Pfizer will fund 100
percent of the development costs and BioNTech will repay Pfizer its 50 percent
share of these costs during the commercialization of the vaccine. This could
account for the higher volume of trade for Pfizer compared with BioNTech.
(Image credits: Investing.com)
On the 9th of November,
Pfizer and BioNTech made history by presenting preliminary data indicating that
the vaccine was over 90 percent effective. On the 2nd of December, The UK gave emergency authorization to the vaccine to become the first western country
to give approval for a coronavirus vaccine.
Moderna
By the end of November, Moderna announced it was applying to
the Food and Drug Administration for an emergency use authorization, it is the
second application, coming just two weeks after Pfizer and BioNTech. If Moderna
receives the authorization, the first injections of its vaccine could start as
early as the 21st of December. US Government backed Moderna’s
efforts, providing around $1 billion in support. After 30,000 volunteers have
taken the vaccine, the preliminary data from the trial showed that the vaccine’s
efficiency rate is 94.1 percent, which is far higher than experts had expected
when the vaccine testing began. This result has positively affected the market
volume.
(Image credits: Investing.com)
On the 16th of November, Moderna announced the
first preliminary data from the trial, followed by the complete data on the 30th
of November. The researchers estimated that the vaccine has an efficiency of
94.1 percent. On the 2nd of
December, Moderna registered a trial to test the vaccine on children between 12
and 18 years old. On the 25th of November, the company has reached
an agreement with the European Commission to supply up to 160 million doses,
with similar deals with Canada, Japan, and Qatar.
AstraZeneca
With nearly 9000 volunteers, who were given two full doses
four weeks apart, the efficiency of AstraZeneca’s vaccine has reached 62
percent. This may be considered one factor affecting the volume of trade in
comparison to other companies. AstraZeneca stressed that the data are
preliminary, rather than full and final.
(Image credits: Investing.com)
On the 23rd of November,
AstraZeneca announced that the vaccine has a promising efficiency percentage.
Surprisingly, an initial half-strength dose led to 90 percent efficiency, while
two standard-dose shots led only to 62 percent efficiency. This led to a huge
drop down in the stock price, being compared with the efficiency percentages of
Pfizer with 90 percent and Moderna with 94.1 percent efficiency.
The most important question right now is: which drug firm will first confirm finalizing the vaccine? Trade now and capitalize on the opportunity since the race is not over yet.
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