Whether it’s from "Moderna or one of the others" positive data is a good sign: Analyst

Raymond James Healthcare Policy Analyst Chris Meekins joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to address how Moderna is faring after the latest test results for its coronavirus vaccine.

Video Transcript

- I do want to talk first more about those developments with Moderna and what's happening with reopening around the country. Chris Meekins is joining us once again. He is Raymond James health care policy analyst joining us from the eastern shore of Maryland. Chris, it's good to see you again. Let's talk about Moderna first, because the market is treating this as a huge development. We just spoke with the CEO of the company a short while ago, and he sounded encouraging as well. How encouraged should we be by this development?

CHRIS MEEKINS: I think what we're seeing is really an unprecedented collaboration between companies and the federal government. And that's good, and that's positive. It's exactly what we do expect from our government leaders in this area. So whether it's Moderna or one of the others, I think anytime we have any positive data, that's a positive sign. But when I'm getting interim data only from the company, not from independent folks, I always do it with a slight little bit of skepticism. With that being said, it's looking positive. They've got some favorable results so far, and hopefully that continues.

But most importantly-- more importantly even than just the favorable ratio for this little company, this one company, is the fact that the government is actually expediting the review process and the clinical trial process, so things are moving much quicker than they would otherwise be able to do. Additionally, they're making sure that we're not going to have the issues we had with testing when they ran out of swabs and those wonderful little plastic tubes. They're actually getting in place the supplies they need to actually produce all the vaccines necessary like needles and syringes.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Hey, it's Adam Shapiro. Thank you for joining us. When we look at what they're doing and the speed with which they're doing it, we keep hearing the pharmaceutical companies say they're not going to make a profit on any of this. Do we take them at face value when they say that? Why shouldn't they make a profit if they save everybody's lives?

CHRIS MEEKINS: I suspect companies as a whole will not be losing money on this endeavor. And the federal government is investing an incredible amount of money. More than $10 billion has been put into these efforts. So I suspect there will be an appropriate collaboration. We will get to a point when there needs to be a discussion about pricing and what that looks like. But in this situation, I think for an industry that has suffered from a lack of confidence from the public-- and then maybe the polite way to say it, and criticism from the public-- I suspect they're not going to use this as an opportunity to maximize profit and will instead try to take actions that benefit the country as a whole.

- Chris, does it matter which company is successful here? Does it matter if it's large or small or has more resources or does not, or does just getting it out there-- is that the most important thing?

CHRIS MEEKINS: I think getting it out there really is the most important thing. I mean, obviously, larger companies that have done this more have the back-end supplies necessary to help make this work. Smaller companies will need a partner. But in this instance, whether it is a large company and the federal government investing in manufacturing-- one other thing the federal government has said they're going to do as part of this Operation Warp Speed is that they say they're actually going to start investing in product before they even know that it works. Now, that's bad from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, but it's really good if they end up betting on the right products.

So yeah, they may waste some products that don't work. But if they start investing before it even gets FDA-approved, that's going to shorten the time in which it can take to get into people by months or maybe even a year if they make that investment. So we have to be willing to waste some taxpayer money on the hope that we can really advance the ball down the field much more quickly.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Chris. Rick Newman here. I follow your updates. You had a recent one out this morning, I think, or over the weekend. I think our audience would be interested in your-- you've made some modifications to your probabilities for when we are turning the corner, whether it's at the end of May or maybe the middle of summer, or maybe we're still struggling with this by the fall. Could you just tell our audience what your probabilities are for those scenarios now?

CHRIS MEEKINS: Sure, Rick. And good to see you again. What we've done is we said that up until this week, we had a 30% likelihood that we would see us turn the corner by Memorial Day. And with Memorial Day a week away, we think it's probably less than 20% now. But we increased the likelihood that we turn the corner by July 4. So we still think that there's a 75% likelihood that by July 4, we've turned the corner on this first wave.

Now, that doesn't mean we may not have issues that we need to deal with in the fall, but we're really making dramatic progress on testing and the positive test rate being below 10% this past week. We now have only three states that meet only one of the president's three grading criteria. All the rest either meet two or three of them. We have 11 states that meet all three. Things are actually going in the right direction. I'm more optimistic about where we are as a country than I've probably been in the last four months.

DAN HOWLEY: Hey, Chris. This is Dan Howley. I just want to ask about exclusivity with a vaccine like this. What kind of, I guess, timeline would there be? Would this be exclusive, or would this be something that would then be forced to be available to all companies that can produce it?

CHRIS MEEKINS: Yeah, I mean, there's no question that intellectual property rights are going to be given to whichever companies do that. But one of the things we're looking at is having multiple vaccines. What we saw with Ebola is that we didn't just pursue one vaccine. We pursued multiple vaccines. And so we may be in a situation where you have two, three, four companies, all of which have their own vaccines that they're producing and able to get to the American public.

So I think there may be some questions if companies try to charge too much for the vaccine in some people's views. But at the end of the day, I think intellectual property is really going to be maintained going forward. The real question will become, will companies that produce the vaccine with US funding prioritize American citizens rather than prioritize other parts of the world? And that part of the exclusivity debate is one that's going to get more heated in the weeks and months to come.

- Yes. We have already seen some arguments in France on that front. Chris Meekins of Raymond James, good to see you again. Be well.

CHRIS MEEKINS: You too. Bye bye.