Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases.
The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and raise costs for companies in the coming years, investors and analysts said.
Photo: Reuters
“Vaccines will not be a growth area under the current administration,” ING global pharma and healthcare lead Stephen Farrelly said, signaling a potential drag on the sector through 2028.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, has moved quickly since taking over the health department.
He fired a panel of independent expert advisers, replacing them with members who share his anti-vaccine views, and dropped broad COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and children.
He also revived research into a long-ago debunked claim linking vaccines to autism, and adopted new reduced childhood vaccine schedules without the long-standing practice of involving a broad group of outside experts.
Investors are concerned the impact of Kennedy’s policies would be hard to reverse, echoing public health experts’ worries, who also said they would lead to preventable illnesses and deaths.
Kennedy said the changes aim to improve safety and bring US vaccine policy in line with other peer nations.
The striking policy changes have begun to prompt some rare public rebukes from industry leaders.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson criticized Kennedy’s rhetoric at a major healthcare conference last week, with Hudson citing “all the... misinformation that is going around.”
Bourla told reporters it was driving down vaccination rates and increasing disease risk.
“I’m seriously frustrated,” he said. “What is happening has zero scientific merit and is just serving an agenda which is political and antivax.”
The long-term prospects for vaccine makers remains robust, as vaccines are still the most effective tool for preventing disease, investors said, but added that companies were now more beholden to the whims of political leaders.
“Unfortunately, success and failure will rest on the opinions of a few people. It’s not enough to have good science and commercial opportunity,” Clear Street analyst Bill Maughan said. “If you’re a biotech investor, it just seems tough to really get conviction in a vaccine name right now.”
Investors said they would stick by large-cap drugmakers less dependent on vaccine revenue such as GSK, Sanofi, Pfizer and Merck. Smaller players such as Moderna, BioNTech and Novavax face sharper risks.
The effect of US changes are already starting to take hold. GSK and Sanofi reported lower US flu vaccine sales in the third quarter, despite a more severe flu season.
In October last year, Australia’s CSL postponed separating its vaccine unit Seqirus, citing “heightened volatility” and falling US vaccination rates.
Some investors said demand for vaccines and disease prevention would likely rebound.
Outbreaks such as the rising measles cases in South Carolina, or an extended severe flu season, could drive renewed vaccine usage, they said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the 2025-2026 flu season had seen at least 11 million cases and 5,000 deaths reported so far, nearly double last year’s toll.
Medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have challenged Kennedy’s policies in court and it remains to be seen how that would play out.
Investors “often focus on shorter-term time frames, while companies clearly take a far longer-term view,” Candriam senior portfolio manager Linden Thomson said.
“These businesses have been around for decades. They don’t invest on a one- or two-year horizon,” said Matthew Masucci, an analyst for Callodine Capital, which owns GSK and Sanofi shares.
For now, investors might be more cautious.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS