Investing.com – Shares of vaccine-makers traded higher Tuesday on a report in The New York Times that the Food and Drug Administration plans to allow people to receive booster shots that are different from their first Covid-19 doses.
BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) was up 5.5% and its partner in developing and marketing their Covid vaccine, Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), gained 1.4%. Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) was up 0.7%.
According to the report, the FDA won’t recommend one shot over another but will let people get a booster that is different from the shot they first received.
The FDA is also expected to approve Moderna and J&J boosters Wednesday, the NYT report said. Pfizer-BioNTech is the only entity to have the FDA's nod so far to administer boosters to people 65 and older and those at-risk.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) rose 2.2% though the company lifting its annual forecast arguably had bigger a role in that. In fact, according to the NYT report, the mix-and-match could reduce the appeal of the company’s vaccine.
A study presented to FDA’s advisory panel has suggested that recipients of J&J’s vaccine might benefit most from Moderna’s booster shot.
J&J now sees its annual adjusted earnings to be around $9.79 per share, up some 1.4% from a prior estimate of $9.65 at center of the guidance range. The company had in July said it expected to produce between 500 million and 600 million doses of its one-shot vaccine this year, pretty much half of its previous target of making a billion.