At the end of last week, for a brief moment, the pandemic appeared to be about to get under control. Yes, Covid-19’s daily death counts were at almost record levels. But the vaccination rate was over a million shots a day, Dr. Fauci was back at the White House pulpit and the new president had a new plan to fight the virus.
Then Monday came and reality hit.
First came the news that
Merck
(ticker: MRK) was giving up the two Covid-19 vaccines it was testing. So
Modern
(MRNA) said his vaccine appears less effective against a new strain of the virus that causes Covid-19.
O
S&P 500
fell 1.2% on Monday morning. And even though the afternoon was already flat, the reality of the remaining fight against Covid-19 seemed even tougher.
In recent weeks, the launch of the currently authorized Covid-19 vaccines has dominated discussions about the virus. Even with hundreds of thousands of people falling ill in the United States each day, the pandemic has started to spread; just a matter of getting a few hundred million shots.
Johnson & Johnsonin
(JNJ) The Covid-19 single-dose vaccine was cavalry on the other side of the hill, ready to inoculate 100 million people in the United States by spring, depending on the test data that is expected for any day now.
But the cracks in that hopeful vision had already begun to reveal themselves. After weeks of ensuring that current vaccines would protect against a new strain originating in the UK, Fauci warned on Thursday that a variant first identified in South Africa may be able to overcome the immune defenses erected by vaccines to some extent.
Now, the implications of that warning are clear. Moderna said Monday that his vaccine appears less effective against the South African strain, and that he will develop a booster injection of his vaccine to protect it. This raises the spectrum of an infinitely more complex vaccine launch, adding the extra booster variable to an already challenging effort to vaccinate an entire population.
Hours before Moderna’s announcement,
Merck
(MRK), perhaps the most successful vaccine developer in the industry, said he had failed in his effort to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. The company said it was ending its work with two Covid-19 vaccines after disappointing initial tests.
The news puts even more pressure on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine Phase 3 trial results. Analysts already expected Johnson & Johnson’s data to move the stock market, depending on the outcome of the judgment. Experts are looking for the vaccine to show at least 80% effectiveness with a single dose.
If the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is disappointing, there are others in the immediate pipeline, including a
Novavax
(NVAX), also currently undergoing Phase 3 testing. But Merck’s programs, although in an early stage of development, were a comforting step back from an experienced vaccine manufacturer with a history of developing and manufacturing a large number of doses. It looked like a kind of pharmacological safety net in case of unpleasant surprises.
Coming a month after the news that another more traditional vaccine from leading vaccine manufacturers
Sanofi
(SNY) and
GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK) had delays in the first tests on elderly patients, this safety net is feeling a little worn out.
Suddenly, it seems much more important that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine works as well as expected.
The news from Moderna, in turn, is a reminder that vaccination may not be the switch that turns off the pandemic.
Two weeks ago, Pfizer’s scientific director said Barron’s that he expected Covid-19 mutations to cause all current vaccines to lose activity within a year or two. Moderna’s announcement this morning suggests an even greater urgency.
In an article not yet peer-reviewed published on Monday, scientists at Moderna found “reduced but still significant neutralization” of laboratory tests for the South African strain Covid-19 using blood collected from individuals who were vaccinated with the vaccine Modern. The company said that, “just in case,” it would test a new booster injection of its vaccine designed to protect against the South African strain. He will also try to use a third dose of his original vaccine as a backup. The company said the new booster injection would be tested in a Phase 1 study in the United States.
The idea of trying to administer booster doses of Covid-19, however, in a country that is already struggling to reach its initial vaccination goals, is enough to keep local public health officials awake at night, if they are asleep. anyway.
The United States has administered 21.8 million doses of vaccines to 18.5 million people since December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A series of doses will be wasted as states, counties and the federal government struggle with enormous logistical challenges, the product of decades of little investment in the country’s public health infrastructure.
Speaking for Barron’s two weeks ago. Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, offered a key piece of advice to smooth the launch: “We can present the most elegant plan in the world, but our national ability to do these things is simply not fantastic”, he said. “Simplicity, man. There is nothing like simplicity. “
Do you know what is not simple? Try to balance the administration of booster doses for healthcare professionals, 90-year-olds and other vulnerable populations, while still running to bring primary doses into the arms of 45-year-olds.
This does not mean that everything is gloomy. Vaccination seems to work in the real world, as the experience in Israel seems to be showing.
But the path ahead looks a little more rocky this afternoon than when the sun came up this morning.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]