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Business

Stock Market Today: Stocks Rise on Encouraging Virus Studies

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Stock markets will be closed Friday because the Christmas Day holiday falls on a Saturday.


Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Stocks traded higher Thursday, as studies on the Omicron coronavirus variant revealed infected people were at less risk of being hospitalized. Stronger U.S. economic data also buoyed markets ahead of the Christmas holiday, and set major stock indexes on track to erase Monday’s steep drop and close the holiday-shortened week in the green.

The


Dow Jones Industrial Average
was up 222 points, or 0.6%, in midday trading Thursday. The


S&P 500
rose 0.7% to 4,729, above the index’s all-time closing high of 4,712, while the


Nasdaq Composite
gained 0.9%.

The latest Omicron headlines were net positive. A study from the University of Edinburgh and another from the Imperial College London found that while the Omicron variant was more infectious, it was less severe. Also, researchers at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases found people were 70% to 80% less likely to be hospitalized if infected with Omicron.

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the Covid-19 antiviral pill from 


Pfizer

(ticker: PFE), adding a new weapon against the pandemic. On Thursday morning, the agency gave a thumbs up to another oral treatment from


Merck

(MRK).

There’s still plenty to keep investors up at night, but a year-end rally has unfolded in the past few days nonetheless.

“If the U.S. was not battling the Omicron variant, U.S. stocks would be dancing higher as the Santa Claus rally would have kept the climb going into uncharted territory,” wrote Edward Moya, senior market analyst, the Americas, at currency brokerage Oanda. “It is too early to say for sure if we will get a Santa Claus rally, but given all the short-term risks of Fed tightening, Chinese weakness, fiscal support uncertainty and Covid, Wall Street is not complaining as the S&P 500 is [at record highs.]”

Thursday morning was a busy one for economic data releases, most of which were collected before the Omicron wave. U.S. jobless claims for the week ended Dec. 18 were 205,000, about equal to the prior week and the average over the past four weeks, according to the Labor Department.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported personal income and consumption expenditures for November on Thursday morning. Consumer earnings rose 0.4% and spending climbed 0.6%. Economists’ consensus had been for increases of 0.6% and 0.5%, respectively.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index, rose 0.5% in November for a year-over-year increase of 4.7%. That compares with a 4.2% annual rise in October and economists’ 4.5% prediction for November.

The central bank’s next policy-making meeting is Jan. 25-26, meaning there will be another round of employment and inflation data for officials to parse through between now and then.

Finally on Thursday morning, the Census Bureau released the durable goods report for November, which helps to provide a window into investment spending in the economy. New orders rose 2.5%, to $268.3 billion last month, versus a 2.1% average forecast.

Oil prices rose on Thursday, reflecting the same economic optimism pushing stocks higher. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil ticked up 0.2%, to $72.90 a barrel.

U.S. Treasury yields also climbed on Thursday, with the closely watched 10-year Treasury note yield up to 1.49%. Yields rise when prices decline, signifying more risk appetite from investors.

Stocks rose Wednesday for a second straight session, getting a boost from rising U.S. consumer confidence. Also lifting sentiment were gains in home sales and data that showed the U.S. economy rose at a rate of 2.3% in the third quarter, higher than the previous estimate.

Stock markets will be closed Friday because the Christmas Day holiday falls on a Saturday.

Here are seven stocks on the move Thursday:  


JD.com

(JD) stock dropped 6% after


Tencent

(0700.HK) said it would distribute its stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm to shareholders. That will come in the form of a $16.4 billion dividend. Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose 4.2% Thursday.

U.S.-listed shares of


AstraZeneca

(AZN) fell 0.7% following a study at the University of Oxford that found a third dose of the company’s Covid-19vaccine was effective against the Omicron variant.


Novavax

(NVAX) fell 3% after early data showed its two-dose vaccine booster produced an immune response to the Omicron variant.

Macau gambling and casino operators rose, as investors expressed optimism about a regulatory review of the city’s gaming sector.


Las Vegas Sands

(LVS) stock climbed 2.8%,


Wynn Resorts

(WYNN) gained 2.6%, and


MGM Resorts International

(MGM) added 1.1%.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com

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World

Delta Variant Foils Australia’s Zero-Tolerance Strategy for Covid-19

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SYDNEY—Australia used a combination of its island geography and local lockdowns to eliminate the coronavirus earlier in the pandemic. But the Delta variant is so infectious that some Australian leaders believe it will be impossible to get down to zero cases again.

Australia, a country of about 26 million people, this week reported the highest number of cases since the pandemic began. There were 747 new local cases of the virus across the country on Wednesday, beating the previous daily high of 716 in July of last year, according to the latest numbers from Our World in Data. The country’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, are in lockdown, as is the country’s capital, Canberra.

“To assume that forevermore there’ll be zero cases around Australia is, I think, an assumption that nobody can really make at this stage,” said Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales state, which includes Sydney. “We can’t pretend that we’re going to be zero cases around Australia of Delta.”

Although small by global standards, Australia’s Delta outbreak is a case study in how quickly it can spread in a lightly vaccinated population with low immunity. The vaccine rollout has increased recently, but just 22% of the population has been fully vaccinated, compared with more than half in the U.S. and the U.K., according to Our World in Data.

Not all of Australia’s leaders are ready to give up on elimination, at least while vaccination rates remain relatively low. Leaders of Australia’s states had agreed to a Covid-19 exit strategy that called for the virus to be aggressively suppressed until at least 70% of the adult population had been vaccinated.

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Business

FDA Plans to Warn J&J Covid-19 Vaccine Raises Risk of Rare Neurological Condition

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U.S. health regulators are expected to warn that the

Johnson & Johnson

JNJ -0.16%

Covid-19 vaccine is linked to a very small incidence of cases of a rare neurological disorder associated with other shots.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to add the warning language to the J&J shot’s label, after finding a handful of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome among the millions of people who have gotten the vaccine, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare neurological disorder in which the immune system attacks nerves, causing temporary but potentially severe paralysis. The risk is a known one with vaccines, including some influenza vaccines and a leading shot to prevent shingles.

J&J didn’t immediately provide a comment.

The warning would be the latest for a vaccine that federal health officials had cautioned raises the risk of a rare blood-clotting condition.

The risk of Guillain-Barré, however, is very low, the person said, with a rate of about three to five cases per million recipients. The risk in the general population is about 1 in one million.

Some 12.7 million people in the U.S. have gotten the one-dose J&J vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As more U.S. adults get their Covid-19 vaccines, a variety of side effects are emerging. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez speaks with an infectious disease specialist on what is common, what isn’t and when to seek medical attention. Photo: Associated Press

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a harmless type of common-cold virus called an adenovirus. It is engineered to carry a piece of genetic code instructing the body’s cells to make something resembling the spike protein that juts from the surface of the coronavirus.

Production of the spikelike protein, in turn, triggers an immune response that can protect a vaccinated person from Covid-19.

Another Covid-19 vaccine, from

AstraZeneca

PLC, which isn’t authorized in the U.S. but used in the U.K. and other countries, uses a technology similar to J&J’s. AstraZeneca’s shot also is linked to an increased risk of Guillain-Barré, federal health officials said.

AstraZeneca didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. authorized the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in late February. Its rollout has struggled after regulators ordered a temporary pause in its administration as investigators studied the rate of the rare clotting disorder among vaccinated people.

The FDA recommends use of the vaccine, saying the benefits outweigh the risks. The agency, however, attached a warning to the vaccine’s label about the risk of the disorder and made recommendations for treatment.

The vaccine requires only one dose and doesn’t need to be stored at ultralow temperatures like messenger RNA vaccines do, which makes it a more straightforward and easier shot for vaccinating people, especially in places for which the freezer conditions and patient follow-up for a second shot would be more difficult to achieve.

Write to Thomas M. Burton at tom.burton@wsj.com and Felicia Schwartz at felicia.schwartz@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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World

Australia’s Delta Outbreak Shows Vaccines Protect Against Hospitalization

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SYDNEY—Early data from Australia’s outbreak of the Covid-19 Delta variant suggest that two vaccine doses offer significant protection against severe illness and hospitalization.

Health authorities in Sydney, Australia’s most populous city that is currently under lockdown because of its Delta outbreak, said Saturday that no one who has received two doses of a vaccine needed to be hospitalized. Of the 47 people in the hospital, 37 haven’t been vaccinated, according to data provided on Saturday.

Four people who were in the hospital got one dose of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine and one person got one dose of the Pfizer Inc. – BioNTech SE vaccine. The other five people received two Pfizer-BioNTech doses—but they are nursing-home residents who were admitted as a precautionary measure.

“Two doses of either the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine is incredibly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, which is an incredibly positive contribution,” said Kerry Chant, the chief health officer for New South Wales state, which includes Sydney.

The figures from Australia are in line with evidence from other countries, including the U.K. and Israel, showing that vaccines offer a high degree of protection against severe illness from the Delta variant. Recent data from Israel, though, showed the Pfizer vaccine is less effective at protecting against infection from the Delta variant when compared with previous strains, posing a challenge for health authorities as many countries ease coronavirus restrictions as vaccination programs progress.

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World

France’s Macron Orders New Nationwide Lockdown

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PARIS—French President Emmanuel Macron announced a national lockdown Wednesday, shuttering schools and nonessential businesses, amid mounting public frustration over his government’s handling of the pandemic.

Speaking from the Élysée Palace on national television, Mr. Macron said new measures were needed after his strategy of relying on targeted restrictions failed to tame the pandemic. France’s sluggish vaccine campaign has left the country vulnerable to more contagious coronavirus variants, which have sent cases soaring and filled the country’s intensive-care units with Covid-19 patients.

“It would be false to say that things will get better on their own,” Mr. Macron said. “Then we would place ourselves in a sensitive situation where the entire country could be overloaded.”

Mr. Macron said restrictions that currently apply only to Paris and other hard-hit areas would be extended across the country for four weeks, starting Saturday evening. Schools will shut for three weeks beginning Monday, Mr. Macron said, with spring break being shifted to coincide with the last two weeks of the shutdown. Unlike a year ago at the start of the pandemic, the public won’t be required to fill out a form to leave the house during the third nationwide lockdown.

In an attempt to cushion France’s economy, Mr. Macron left the country relatively open during the depths of winter and then hewed to softer restrictions in mid-March as infections surged and intensive-care units in Paris overflowed. French authorities were loath to shut schools, taking pride in avoiding that step even as Germany and other European countries closed them months ago.

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World

Europe Despairs as Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout Stalls and Pandemic Grinds On

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BERLIN—Susan Tabbach feels drained. She has been juggling working and caring full-time for her three small children at home during lockdowns, while worrying about her elderly parents, who aren’t vaccinated.

She sees little prospect for relief. “I’m just exhausted,” said the 41-year-old architect from Aachen, a German city near the Belgian and Dutch borders. “I would like at least to know that my parents are safe.”

Europeans of all ages, from children to grandparents, are becoming exhausted with a crisis that is now entering its second year and whose end seems to be receding beyond the horizon. Vaccinations are progressing at a glacial pace, Covid-19 cases are spiraling up again and increasingly unpopular governments impose new restrictions weekly.

The mixture of pessimism, resignation, and anger contrasts with feelings of optimism elsewhere in the West, especially in the U.S. and the U.K., where vaccinations are progressing much faster and attention is moving to reopening the economy.

Germany is a striking case of changing fortunes. The country fared well in the first phase of the pandemic last year, and authorities gained plaudits for keeping infections and deaths low. Now, after four months of largely ineffective lockdowns and with a slow and bureaucratic vaccination regime that hasn’t so far picked up speed, infections are soaring again and the government is seeing its poll ratings plummet.

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Health

Scientists Say They Found Cause of Rare Blood Clotting Linked to AstraZeneca Vaccine

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BERLIN—Scientists in Europe said they had identified a mechanism that could lead the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine to cause potentially deadly blood clots in rare instances as well as a possible treatment for it.

Two teams of medical researchers in Norway and Germany have independently found that the vaccine could trigger an autoimmune disorder causing blood to clot in the brain, which would offer an explanation for isolated incidents across Europe in recent weeks.

Several European countries briefly halted their rollouts of the vaccine this week after more than 30 recipients were diagnosed with the condition known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis or CVST. Most of the people affected were women under the age of 55.

The issue affected a tiny portion of those who had received the shot however, and after investigating, the European drugs regulator ruled that the benefits outweighed the potential risks of the vaccine, and recommended vaccinations resume.

Latest Vaccine Developments

Some countries, such as Germany, France and Italy, resumed vaccination with AstraZeneca’s shot on Friday, with an added warning that it could be linked to blood clotting. The French healthcare authority, which recorded three cases of CVST connected to the vaccine, advised the government on Friday to only administer the shot to people older than 55.

Others, including Norway, Sweden and Denmark, said they needed more research before restarting their rollouts. Norway registered three cases of CVST, one of them fatal. The country vaccinated around 120,000 people with the shot. Finland suspended the use of AstraZeneca on Friday, after recording two cases of what the authorities called unusual blood clotting.

Pål André Holme, a professor of hematology and chief physician of the Oslo University Hospital who headed an investigation into the Norwegian cases, said his team had identified an antibody created by the vaccine that was triggering the adverse reaction.

​Europe’s top drug regulator endorsed AstraZeneca’s vaccine after it was suspended in several countries over blood-clot concerns. WSJ explains what’s at stake for a shot that’s been widely used around the world and may soon be considered for emergency use in the U.S. Photo: Mykola Tys/SOPA Images

“Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response,” Prof. Holme said.

Norway’s health authority cited the findings when announcing that it would not resume the vaccination.

A team of German researchers around Andreas Greinacher, professor of transfusion medicine at the Greifswald University Clinic, said they had independently came to the same conclusion as Prof. Holme in a statement and a press conference on Friday.

In Germany, 13 cases of CVST were detected among around 1.6 million people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Twelve patients were women and three died.

The German researchers, who coordinated with colleagues in Austria, Ireland and Britain, said in a statement that patients who show symptoms four days after vaccination, such as headaches, dizziness or impaired vision, could be quickly diagnosed with a blood test. Prof. Greinacher said the news meant that people should not fear the vaccine.

“Very, very few people will develop this complication,” Prof. Greinacher said in a press conference Friday. “But if it happens we now know how to treat the patients.”

Pål André Holme’s team at Oslo University Hospital identified an antibody created by the AstraZeneca vaccine that was triggering the adverse reaction.



Photo:

Terje Pedersen/Associated Press

The German government said it was examining the findings, but stuck to its decision to resume use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Neither the German nor the Norwegian findings were published or peer reviewed. Prof. Greinacher said he had submitted his findings for publication to the British medical journal The Lancet.

The German Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Research reviewed Prof. Greinacher’s work and issued a statement Friday advising physicians how to diagnose and treat the condition should it arise in vaccine recipients.

Dr. Robert Klamroth, deputy-chairman of the Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Research, said the rare autoimmune reaction occurred more frequently in Germany because the country initially only authorized the vaccine for people younger than 64. Britain, which had fewer incidents but vaccinated many more people, was predominantly giving the shot to older recipients.

Once diagnosed, the condition should be treated with blood thinning medication and immunoglobulin, which targets the antibody that causes the problem.

“We believe the most likely hypothesis is that this particular vaccine is causing a rare autoimmune reaction that triggers antibodies, which then interact with the platelets, but we don’t know why this is happening,” Dr. Klamroth said.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Germany, France, Italy Suspend Use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 Vaccine

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BERLIN—Germany, France and Italy joined a group of smaller European countries that have temporarily stopped administering Covid-19 vaccines made by

AstraZeneca

AZN 0.40%

PLC, saying the move was precautionary amid a small number of cases of blood clotting reported on the continent.

Denmark last week said it had paused AstraZeneca shots for two weeks following reports of blood clotting, and several other European countries quickly followed suit, saying they were doing so out of an abundance of caution. Norway, Ireland and the Netherlands are among countries that have paused vaccinating with AstraZeneca’s shot.

Health regulators in the U.K. and Europe, along with AstraZeneca and its vaccine development partners at the University of Oxford, say there is no known connection between severe clotting and the shot. AstraZeneca has said the number of cases of blood clotting among the roughly 17 million people in the European Union and U.K. who have received the shot is lower than for the general population.

Europe’s medicines regulator said last week it was looking into around 30 reported cases of severe clotting, out of around five million people who have received the shot in the bloc. Last week, the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said the “vaccine’s benefits currently still outweigh risks” and has continued recommending its use. The agency said most side effects are mild or moderate. Clinical trials didn’t raise flags about blood clotting as a risk.

The temporary halt to the AstraZeneca shots is another major setback in a wider vaccine rollout in Europe hamstrung by supply shortages and other hurdles at the same time as the continent wrestles with rising Covid-19 cases. Europe’s vaccination rates are far lower than in the U.S. and the U.K., where Covid-19 cases have stabilized or are falling.

Delays in giving out the AstraZeneca vaccine threaten to exacerbate vaccination-drive woes and could put further pressure on governments trying to speed things up. AstraZeneca has become a particular target of European politicians who have accused it of not doing enough to provide the continent with more shots.

French President

Emmanuel Macron,

in announcing his country’s pause, said the EMA was expected to publish a recommendation regarding the vaccine on Tuesday. The agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The series of pauses across Europe threatens to undermine the AstraZeneca vaccine’s credibility just three months into its rollout. The U.K. was the first country to adopt the shot for mass use, at the end of December.

The shot previously faced skepticism over clinical-trial results that suggested it wasn’t as effective as other vaccines hitting the market. Some of those perceptions have faded as the U.K. inoculated millions of people with the shot, generating real-world data that showed it to be strongly effective in preventing severe disease and death.

The U.K.’s relatively quick vaccination program—with some 11 million AstraZeneca shots playing a key role—hasn’t raised blood-clotting concerns. The British medicines regulator has said it maintains its confidence in the vaccine and its safety.

Last week, reports surfaced of a potential clotting issue, with one death and a case of severe illness, in Austria. That country suspended one batch of the vaccine but said it didn’t have evidence of a connection between the health incidents and the shot and kept using it otherwise.

AstraZeneca has warned it would fall short of projected vaccine deliveries to Europe in coming months.



Photo:

Sean Gallup/Zuma Press

On Thursday, Denmark, Norway and Iceland halted use of the vaccine altogether. Danish authorities said they would wait at least two weeks before administering it again. The EMA, which acts much like the Food and Drug Administration in regulating medicine across the European Union, has already said serious blood clots weren’t any more common among vaccinated people than among the general population. It has said it is investigating the reported cases of multiple thrombosis, or the formation of blood clots within blood vessels, and similar conditions.

Last week, AstraZeneca warned it would fall short of projected vaccine deliveries to Europe in coming months, by 100 million doses—almost two-thirds less than what the continent was expecting based on the company’s earlier pledges.

AstraZeneca Chief Executive

Pascal Soriot

has repeatedly pushed back against doubts about the shot’s effectiveness and criticism of its rollout. Last month, AstraZeneca said it would roughly double global vaccine production to 200 million doses a month by April.

In Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, which regulates vaccine use, said it became concerned by an unspecified number of new cases showing thrombosis, blood-platelet deficiency and bleeding in people soon after vaccination with the AstraZeneca shot. In a statement on its website Monday, the institute said it recommended temporarily halting use of the vaccine until further study by the EMA after seeing what it called a “striking accumulation” of those symptoms.

The regulator recommended that people who “feel increasingly unwell” more than four days after receiving a vaccination should seek medical attention. It flagged severe, persistent headaches or “pinpoint bleeding” of the skin as symptoms of concern.

On Friday, a nonprofit global organization of specialists in blood-clotting disorders and research, the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, advised continued use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The society said that based on available data, the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks “even for patients with a history of blood clots or for those taking blood-thinning medications.”

Covid-19 itself is known to cause blood clots, a factor researchers say they are taking into account when considering the benefits versus potential risks of vaccination.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Effective Against U.K. Variant in Trial

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LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and

AstraZeneca

PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.

The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.

Preliminary studies from

Pfizer Inc.

and

Moderna Inc.

found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.

Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.

The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.

As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ

The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.

Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.

Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.

Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.

By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.

The U.K. Coronavirus Variant

The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.

The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.

Andrew Pollard,

director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.

“We don’t know the answer,” he said.

Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.

Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.

Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner

BioNTech

SE,

Johnson & Johnson

and

Novavax Inc.

are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.

Babak Javid,

associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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