July 12 (Lagos) - Hopes of a vaccine sparked a rally on wall street and other nations around the world. Positive news from companies like Pfizer, Gilead sciences boosted hopes today. Russia announced that they have successfully completed clinical trials on human volunteers and that the vaccine will be in public circulation as early as next month. The race to find is vaccine is so hot that it is cause stocks of smaller companies to rise exponentially in New York.
Companies like Novawax have seen their stock price jump from $3 levels in February to a close of $106 per unit today in New York. The Company got a boost when the US Government gave them a grant of more than $200 million in April. The Company announced a $200 million secondary last month and its stock continued to surge after a brief pause. Last week they received another boost of $1.5 billion from investors.
Another case is the Company called Equillium which announced a successful trial of its drug called Itolizumab in India just yesterday and saw its stock price jumped by more than 700% today in New York. The drug was approved by the Drug Controller General of India. The Company is based in California where the corona virus infections have been surging while the drug has been approved in India where the virus cases are surging as well.
The world-wide spread of the Covid-19 corona virus is showing no signs of abating. India is now the third most affected nation in the world after USA and Brazil. The nations top Bollywood dynasty had three generations affected by the virus over the weekend. Even the US President has been seen wearing a mask recently.
Pharma stocks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange are few and far in between with almost zero research being carried out in the nation of 200 million people apart from market research. These companies are just sales and distribution offices operating in Nigeria while they can point to lack of infrastructure and funding to carry out any research and trials in the country.
We must look towards other nations to develop a vaccine and then start importing it as soon as possible. On a lighter note, hopefully the CBN will not expand the banned item list to include the drug as their USD reserves continue to fall and fresh expectations of another devaluation start to rise. Its a familiar situation over the past 5 years now.
reporting for easykobo.com on Monday, July 13 2020 from Lagos, Nigeria