S&P 500 falls after Pfizer announces vaccine supply chain issues

The S&P 500 dropped 0.062% after rising to an intraday high earlier in trading as Pfizer announced it plans to cut the number of vaccines it plans to ship this year due to supply chain issues. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

Dec. 3 (UPI) — The S&P 500 turned negative in the final hour of trading on Thursday as Pfizer announced it was facing supply chain issues.

The S&P 500 ended the day down 2.29 points, or 0.062%, after hitting an intraday high earlier in the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 85.73 points, or 0.29%, after gaining more than 200 points earlier in the session and the Nasdaq Composed dropped 27.82 points, or 0.23%.

Markets reversed their gains from earlier in the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Pfizer only expected to ship half of the vaccines it originally planned to release this year, saying that “scaling up the raw material supply chain took longer than expected.”

The drugmaker, however, said it still planned to ship more than a billion doses of the vaccine in 2021.

Markets also reacted to the latest report from the Labor Department stating that 712,000 additional workers filed new unemployment claims for the week ending Nov. 28, a decline of 75,000.

Further, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the phone Thursday to discuss a bipartisan $908 billion pandemic relief bill backed by Democratic leaders on Wednesday.

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