TOKYO – Tokyo stocks opened higher Tuesday, shrugging off falls on Wall Street, after US pharmaceutical firm Moderna said it was asking the US and European authorities to approve its coronavirus vaccine.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 0.95% or 250.40 points at 26,684.02 in early trade, while the broader Topix index gained 0.78% or 13.73 points to 1,768.65.
Investors disliked falls in US shares and the rise in domestic virus cases, but “expectations for normalisation of economic activities with the development of new coronavirus vaccines are supporting the downside,” Mizuho Securities said.
Moderna reported full results had confirmed a high vaccine efficacy rate, estimated at 94.1 percent, and said it was filing Monday for emergency authorisation in the United States and Europe.
It was set to join American pharmaceuticals maker Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, which applied for similar approvals last week and have predicted their vaccine could be available in the US shortly after December 10.
Hours before the opening bell in Tokyo, reports said the biotech firm has applied to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the authorisation.
If the FDA agrees Moderna's product is safe and effective, the first of the drug's two doses could begin being administered to Americans by the middle of December.
Moderna has agreed with the Japanese government to provide more than 40 million shots from early next year through Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical.
In Tokyo, Takeda Pharmaceutical was down 0.21% at 3,737 yen as investors locked in profits.
Some exporters were higher, with Panasonic gaining 0.45% to 1,117.5 yen, Sony trading up 0.9% at 9,791 yen, and Honda Motor up 0.73% at 2,892.5 yen.
The dollar fetched 104.34 yen in early Asian trade, against 104.28 yen in New York late Monday.
Japan’s jobless rate in October stood at 3.1%, up 0.1 percentage points from the previous month and in line with market expectations, according to data released by the internal affairs ministry before the opening bell. – AFP, December 1, 2020
