Pharmaceutical shares continued to fall Friday after President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to guide the Division of Well being and Human Companies.
Shares of COVID vaccine producers Moderna and Pfizer fell early Friday morning, down 4% and 4.3% respectively.
Shares of Novavax, one other US-based biotech firm, slipped 2.6%.
Germany-based BioNTech shares plunged 5.9% and British pharma firm GSK shares dropped 2.9%.
The shares had began to fall within the remaining hour of buying and selling on Thursday as stories emerged of Trump’s contentious decide.
Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have struggled to match the earnings seen in the course of the pandemic as People have pulled again on receiving COVID pictures.
If RFK Jr. – son of the lawyer common and US senator who was assassinated in 1968 – is confirmed as the top of HHS, he’ll oversee 80,000 staff, a $1.7 trillion price range and a community of health-related companies.
Although Kennedy pledged he wouldn’t “take away” anybody’s vaccines, he has been a vocal, longtime critic of the vaccination of youngsters.
He has repeatedly claimed that vaccines are linked to autism.
He additionally based Kids’s Well being Protection, an anti-vaccine nonprofit.
In Might 2023, Kennedy, then a presidential candidate operating as an impartial, claimed “pesticides, cellphones, ultrasound” may very well be inflicting an upswing in Tourette syndrome and peanut allergic reactions, The Put up’s editorial board wrote Thursday night time.
He has backed the consumption of uncooked milk, which authorities well being companies have warned raises the chance of salmonella, E. coli and listeria, and has forged doubt on whether or not HIV results in AIDS.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper – who beforehand dismissed RFK Jr. as a “conspiracy theorist” – joked about his nomination because the information broke Thursday night.
“Well America, I hope you like measles,” Tapper stated.
