Great news for ZEN just in time to sink the farm into a fleeting market already saturated with established players
Seeking Alpha
The U.S. will be able to vaccinate its entire adult population by the end of May, according to President Biden, bringing the target forward by two months. That's largely thanks to a deal his administration engineered between two of the country's biggest drugmakers. The U.S. government has agreed to provide Merck ( MRK) with nearly $270M to help produce a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ), which received FDA emergency use approval this past weekend.
Bigger picture: Merck is already one of the world's largest vaccine makers, but it has fallen behind in the race to develop a jab for COVID-19. It's instead going to be using the fresh federal funding to produce raw materials, scale up manufacturing capacity and complete the fill-and-finish process. The funding is in addition to Merck's continued investment in its global vaccines manufacturing network as part of its planned capital investments of more than $20B from 2020 through the end of 2024.
"This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II," Biden declared. "I want to thank Johnson & Johnson and Merck for stepping up and being good corporate citizens during this national crisis." The White House is also boosting the number of vaccine doses being sent to states each week from 14.5M-15.2M, up from 8.6M when Biden took office in January. He also called on states to give priority to teachers, school staff and child care workers.
What else is happening? The remarks came shortly after Texas became the largest state to end its mask mandate and authorized all businesses to reopen "100 percent." Texas was followed shortly thereafter by Mississippi, where Gov. Tate Reeves said he would end a statewide mask mandate effective Wednesday, adding "It is time!" On the other side of the fence, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she is "really worried about more states rolling back public health measures... At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained." ( 223 comments) |
