Moderna Inc. stock was down 6.6% premarket Friday, after the COVID vaccine maker said a trial of a flu vaccine candidate failed to meet one of its goals.
"While we did not achieve non-inferiority for the Influenza B strains which are more frequent in younger populations, we have already updated the vaccine that we believe could improve immune responses against Influenza B and will seek to quickly confirm those improvements in an upcoming clinical study thanks to the agility of our mRNA platform," Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in a statement.
The news comes as the seven-day average of new U.S. COVID cases continues to fall and stood at 37,775 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker. That's down 9% from two weeks ago.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 8% at 28,795. The average for deaths was 398, down 14% from two weeks ago. The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 673.7 million on Friday, while the death toll rose above 6.86 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world with 103 million cases and 1,117,113 fatalities