The stock price of several companies that produce COVID-19 vaccines rose following concerns over the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Moderna spiked 20% on Black Friday and was also up 9% on Monday. The company announced on Friday that it is working on a booster for the omicron variant.
“Moderna will rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate (mRNA-1273.529),” according to a press release from Moderna. “This candidate is part of the Company’s strategy to advance variant-specific candidates for a subset of variants of significant concern.”
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Pfizer was up 6% on Friday and 1% on Monday. The company reportedly said it could have an updated version of the vaccine within 100 days if its current vaccine proves ineffective to combat the omicron variant.
BioNTech was up 14% on Friday and up 3% on Monday.
Another company seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for its coronavirus vaccine, Novavax, was up 9% on Friday and was flat on Monday.
News about the omicron variant emerged earlier in November. The doctor who was credited with alerting South African authorities to the variant, Angelique Coetzee, assured that there is no reason to panic over the variant.
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“It’s all speculation at this stage,” Coetzee said. “It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far, the cases we are seeing are extremely mild. Maybe two weeks from now, I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing.”
