This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 16, 2020 - November 22, 2020

Last Monday, the world received encouraging news of a Covid-19 vaccine that is more than 90% effective. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced that their experimental vaccine appeared to work — and quite well, too — judging by the large-scale trial they had conducted and the preliminary analysis.

Although it is still uncertain if the vaccine will induce complications, how long it will remain effective, or whether it will be suitable for the young and elderly, among others, it will become available soon.

Global financial markets reflected the excitement, with equity markets around the world rallying ahead of the actual release of the vaccine. Last Tuesday, the FBM KLCI jumped 3.33% or 50.75 points to a more than two-month high of 1,575.07 — the biggest single-day gain since March 20, when it soared 6.85%.

According to CGS-CIMB, the news of the vaccine could be a signal that the worst may be over, prompting investors to take profit on Covid-19 beneficiary stocks in the glove and technology sectors, and switch instead to recovery plays — banks, airlines, airports, retailers, gaming and media, whose share prices have been “significantly dented by the movement restrictions”.

One of the first to take profit was Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, who sold US$5.6 million worth of Pfizer shares on the New York Stock Exchange last Monday — the very day the pharmaceutical giant announced the vaccine’s efficacy in preliminary results, prompting a 7.7% rally in the stock to US$39.20.

Over the following days, however, market excitement began to wane as it dawned on investors that perhaps the road ahead remains long and winding.

Take Pfizer’s immunising elixir. Assuming that it does work, the company can manufacture only about 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine next year, of which 85% has already been snapped up by developed markets — including the US, the UK, the EU and Japan — through advance purchase agreements.

Not surprisingly, poorer countries will have to wait their turn at the back of the queue. Researchers at Duke University have predicted that billions of people in poor and middle-income countries may not be immunised until two to three years later despite an international agreement to allocate the vaccine fairly around the world.

Then, there is the issue of viability. The vaccine itself needs to be maintained, stored and transported at an otherworldly low temperature of minus 80°C, thus requiring a fleet of ultra-cold freezers that is not readily available. According to news reports, even a country as advanced as the US does not have these facilities in most of its hospitals and clinics.

Perhaps the mania will now centre on establishing cold room facilities, in the same manner that dozens of companies jumped on the bandwagon to set up production lines to make rubber gloves, personal protective equipment and face masks since the virus outbreak, or to acquire smaller companies that are already in those businesses.

Market movements and forecasts over the past week have proved just how sentiment-driven we are. Any mention of a plausible vaccine appears to spark the hope that things will go back to normal any day now. After all, what wouldn’t we give to return to normalcy after months of having to live upended lives?

In the US, there is an old joke about country music. It says when you play a country song backwards, you get everything back — the spouse, job, car, house and dog. Right now, the vaccine is one of those classics in rewind.

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