What happened
The latest rise in COVID-19 statistics is bringing investors back to coronavirus stocks. That, combined with a top-down effort to develop an updated vaccine and get it in the arms of as many Americans as possible, juiced several stocks associated with fighting the disease.
Novavax (NVAX 3.54%) was among these titles, closing the day nearly 4% higher. That performance convincingly beat the 0.7% rise of the S&P 500 index on the day.
So what
Late afternoon Friday, President Joe Biden said that he has formally requested that Congress provide additional funding for new COVID vaccines. He also tentatively recommended that all Americans receive updated jabs when they become available.
Viruses tend to mutate over their lives in order to adapt to changing conditions; COVID is no exception. Since the pandemic, vaccine makers have introduced new versions of their shots to prevent against infection from new strains, such as the recent omicron.
Novavax is among the companies currently developing new jabs to help combat a recent resurgence in COVID cases. The company's Nuvaxovid is one of three vaccines that has been either approved or authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with Pfizer and BioNTech's Comirnaty, and Spikevax from Moderna.
Now what
While COVID remains a threat, it's still an open question how intense the current wave might turn out to be. In the last full week of July, hospital admissions for COVID were just over 9,000. While this was a week-over-week increase of 12%, that total was well short of the roughly 44,000 per week as recently as January.
