Novavax awarded department of defense contract for COVID-19 vaccine – Reuters

Novavax awarded department of defence contract for COVID-19 vaccine, according to Reuters.

Ket notes

• $60 million funding for manufacturing of nvx-cov2373.
• Will work with US-based biologics CDMO to manufacture antigen component of nvx-cov2373 for at least 10 million doses of vaccine.
• Will collaborate with US-based CDMOS to scale up production and manufacture of matrix-m adjuvant component of vaccine.

Market implications

The stock market has rallied as if it were a forgone conclusion that there will be no further spikes in the virus and that a vaccine was imminent. Well, the recent new cases, such as in California, begs to differ.

On Wall Street on Thursday, the S&P 500 index started to reflect how fragile investor's conviction really is. The index was sliding below yesterday's lows and futures struggle to come up for air in Asia.

A Los Angeles Times analysis shows that the number of weekly cases in California continues to rise, exceeding 17,000 last week for the first time in the pandemic. California is one of about 20 states where new cases are increasing over the past five days, according to Johns Hopkins University.