Vaccine Race Won’t Decide AstraZeneca's Future
After positive results from rival Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine trials, investors may become less fixated on AstraZeneca’s parallel anti-Covid project.
We’ll need more than one.
Photographer: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images
AstraZeneca Plc boss Pascal Soriot recently said he hoped there’d be more than one successful vaccine against Covid-19 given the sheer quantities required. His company’s shares have soared this year largely on hopes for the University of Oxford shot that it’s helping test, manufacture and eventually distribute.
But on Monday AstraZeneca’s investors didn’t celebrate encouraging data from rival Pfizer Inc.’s coronavirus vaccine. The U.K. firm wasn’t the only drugmaker to see its shares fall, but the decline in its stock looks like an expression of disappointment it might not “win” the race to land a preventative drug.