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Coronavirus latest: Tuesday, May 19

According to a report from STAT, vaccine experts are saying that Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, mRNA-1273, does not have sufficient data to support the optimism which surrounds it. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins The Final Round to break down the latest news about the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, let's get back to some of today's market-moving headlines. Again, right as we came on the air, a story out of STAT News regarding yesterday's announcement from Moderna on its progress with a vaccine for COVID. The headline here, vaccine experts saying Moderna didn't produce data critical to assessing COVID-19 vaccine. That moved the entire market quite considerably right as we came on the air. Moderna shares are off about 8.8% right now but off the lows that we saw.

The stock's at $73. The stock was down around $71 when this headline hit the tape. We've got the Dow and the S&P still in red figures. The Nasdaq is up about 1/2 of 1%.

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But I want to bring in Anjalee Khemlani now for a little bit more. Anjalee, I guess, not just on this story but maybe this is one of what we expect to be a series of stories putting into context the news that we heard from Moderna yesterday.

I know your reporting has, you know, kind of fleshed out how, OK, vaccines are very good potential interim solutions here, but, you know, we're not even talking about manufacturing of how many doses. We're not talking about long-term safety. And I think the market's enthusiasm around Moderna yesterday I think not unexpectedly is now being tempered about 24 hours later.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right, and Myles, this is something that we have actually continued to see. Even when Gilead's, you know, results came out for its antiviral treatment, we also saw a similar sort of cautionary approach. And in discussions that I had had yesterday, there were a number of experts who were saying, you know, that the sample size is pretty small.

But really the key takeaway from yesterday is that it is responsive. The virus is responsive to some attempt to create antibodies, and that was basically the bottom line. Beyond that, there are still so many questions, and I vaguely recall breaking Jen's heart yesterday a little bit on comments about that, specifically about how there's so many questions remaining about what do antibodies mean? How long do they last?

The patients who were tested, their antibodies tested two weeks later, and anyone who has gone for antibody tests post recovery, there are questions about what that means for them too. So all in the span of, you know, how this virus is affecting everyone and what do the results of any tests mean? what do the studies actually show? and will we see large scale? remain a question right now. And so this is just highlighting, again, sort of that similar pattern of we still have to wait and see.

One of the major questions when it comes to Moderna, though, is that it is working with the government in developing this drug, as we talked about even with the CEO, you know, asking about whether or not the large amount of funding from the government will play a role in pricing. There's discussions about that too, about, you know, the government has a reason to be supportive of this.

But at the same time, they were silent. We only heard from Moderna about these results, and we haven't yet seen that full results and that full play out of what the results and what the analysis have been.

So a lot of questions still swirling, a lot of caution. But again, that optimism from yesterday kind of tempered today.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and you know, Anjalee, obviously we're going to be talking about this for probably the next several years in various contexts. But I think just what's happened in the last 24 hours, it's so interesting because what Moderna said yesterday is absolutely extremely positive. That's very good news. The problem is that-- you know, the problem is many-- or the problems are many. And I think beginning to sort out, you know, the two sides of this, which is what it means for a vaccine and what the market is going to care about, is probably a discussion that's going to ping pong back and forth, one imagines, over time.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yes, absolutely. And you've also heard some people sort of be critical about just jumping on headlines and not waiting for the full sort of analysis to come out. So we'll definitely be seeing how this all plays out.

MYLES UDLAND: Well, as we all know, the stock market loves jumping on headlines and not waiting for the full analysis to come out. All right, Anjalee Khemlani with the latest on Moderna. Thanks for joining.