Gold Price Drops on Coronavirus Vaccine Breakthrough

The price of gold has fallen four percent on the news that a coronavirus vaccine has outperformed expectations in testing.

Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company developing the vaccine, said today that the vaccine prevented 90% of people from catching the virus in clinical trials. While the trial has yet to be concluded, the results were far better than expected.

“This is really a spectacular number,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, told the New York Times, “I wasn’t expecting it to be this high. I was preparing myself for something like 55 percent.”

When the news dropped, the price of gold fell from $1954 per ounce to $1871. This $83 fall came within the last three hours.

The stock market was also affected by the announcement. The FTSE 100 rallied 5.2%, with many airline and energy stocks showing significant gains. In contrast, shares in Zoom—a company that become vital during the pandemic—fell by 18%.

The price of Bitcoin briefly spiked two percent when the news hit, but the gains were swiftly eradicated and it's now trading lower—at $15,236—than it was previously.