Coronavirus Latest: Thursday, September 3
On Thursday, Novavax published positive trial data, saying that its coronavirus vaccine candidate was ‘safe’ and ‘elected an immune response. This come as Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announced that they would start phase 1/2 of their adjuvanted vaccine. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the latest news about the coronavirus on The Final Round.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: Let's turn our attention now away from the markets quickly and talk a bit about what's going on in the coronavirus world. And perhaps, in a weird way, it's market negative to get more good news on the vaccine front-- faster reopening could be negative for the growth names that have driven this market, but positive for maybe the left behind sectors-- Jared mentioned United Airlines, the banks, so on and so forth. But for the science news on what actually happened today, we're joined now by Anjalee Khemlani.
And, Anjalee, it seems that in the last couple of months, we have, at least from your reporting, had nothing but good or positive news when it comes to any kind of vaccine. And that's once again in the news today.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: That's true, Myles. And once again, we do have some positive news. And that's largely because we are seeing sort of this unprecedented pace of vaccine development and trials. So right now, looking at GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi on their partnership, entering phase one human trials-- meanwhile getting results from Novovax in the "New England Journal of Medicine."
They already did tell us the results, but this sort of explains the data, which, of course, as we have come to understand, is way more important than just the press release when they get the trial data. The GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, looking to get at least some sort of results by phase one, and maybe by the end of the year, and then maybe approval by the first half of next year, which is a little bit later than what we've seen.
Of course, we know the frontrunners, Moderna and Pfizer, are well ahead of the game and are actually stoking some of those concerns of, you know, a rushed vaccine when we look at what the administration is preparing for. We heard earlier about an email-- or rather, a letter-- from CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield last week indicating that public health systems should, you know, really prepare for a possible vaccine by November, December and for that distribution. Meanwhile, many health experts wondering where that could be coming from and saying that it could possibly be unsafe if such a vaccine is rushed by election day. And then you have the administration, of course, pushing back on those concerns, saying that it is not, in fact, tied to election day, just happens to be around the time that they anticipate some sort of authorization.
MYLES UDLAND: And who could say, right? Who could say whether that's a coincidence or not? I guess, look, we all want a vaccine sooner rather than later. Maybe it does fall at the beginning of November. That would be a welcome development, certainly, in my view, and we can all kind of reflect on this once the pandemic is over and we get back to our real lives. I think that's the number one priority right now that I and all of us here really have. Anjalee, thanks for all.
