US suspension of the J&J vaccine manageable: Yesterday, the US suspended the administration of the J&J vaccines due to six reported US cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the J&J vaccine (out of more than 6.8 million injections) - the same events that suspended AstraZeneca in several EU countries recently. This has been a concern, as the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines are based on the same technology. The pause is expected to be short ("a matter of days", see Twitter thread) in order to give the health care systems some time to prepare for the possibility of more future cases. We are not overly concerned about the US vaccine roll-out, as the J&J vaccine accounts for less than 4% of the total number of administered doses. The US is more heavily relying on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

More challenging for EU: The J&J news is more problematic from an EU perspective, where the vaccine roll-out is slower and where countries have already had to deal with the AstraZeneca vaccine. One thing is whether the vaccine is approved, another is whether people are willing to get vaccinated with a specific vaccine type. J&J has suspended EU deliveries until further notice, see press release, which came as a big surprise to the EU Commission, see Reuters. Without the J&J vaccine it will be much more difficult for the EU to reach its target that 70% of the adult population is vaccinated by summer.

Moderna delivers better vaccine news: Yesterday evening, Moderna issued a press release stating that the Moderna vaccine is 90% effective after six months (95% against severe cases). This is good news, as one of the key unknowns is how long-lasting protection is. Moderna also said that new preclinical data for its booster vaccine candidates (targeting the South African variant B.1.351) have shown good results. It is very positive that we likely soon will have a booster vaccine, just in case. This means that one key downside risk is diminishing.

Chief Analyst, Allan von Mehren +45 45 12 80 55, alvo@danskebank.dk