(Yicai Global) May 24 -- Shares in Shanghai Junshi Biosciences plummeted 20 percent to the daily limit today after discrepancies made in an announcement by the Chinese biopharmaceutical firm that its Covid-19 tablet has completed clinical trials and that Junshi would now apply for it to go to market set off investor jitters.

Junshi’s share price [SHA:688180] closed at CNY85.60 (USD12.82) as of 3 p.m. China time. The stock has still gained 28 percent in value so far this year. Its Hong Kong-traded shares [HKG:1877] sank 14.4 percent to trade at HKD47.10 (USD6).

The drugmaker and co-developer Suzhou Vigonvita Life Sciences have completed clinical trials for their Covid-19 tablet VV116, which is expected to be China’s first orally taken Covid-19 treatment on the market, Shanghai-based Junshi said yesterday.

However, the news did little to bolster Junshi’s stock price as no detailed data of the trial was released and there was no information about the secondary endpoint of the trial, an investor told Yicai Global.

VV116 has met the planned primary endpoint of its Phase III clinical study, which is a comparison with US biopharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s Covid-19 pill Paxlovid in the treatment of mild to moderate cases, Junshi said.

The pair will soon apply to take the medication to market in China, said Junshi, which runs research and development centers in Shanghai and Suzhou in China and San Francisco and Maryland in the US. They are also carrying out clinical studies of VV116 in other countries, it added.

At present Paxlovid is the only orally taken Covid-19 medicine available in the country. China approved the import of the drug in February and it is now selling for CNY2,300 (USD351) a box.

Covid-19 pills are becoming a focus of the market amid a fresh wave of outbreaks driven by the highly contagious omicron variant. Other such tablet-form medicines now at the clinical trial stage are Kintor Pharmaceutical’s Proxalutamide and Genuine Biotech’s Azvudine.

Junshi’s net losses more than halved last year from the year before to CNY721 million (USD108.1 million), and revenue surged two-and-a-half times to CNY4 billion (USD600 million), according to the company’s latest financial report.

Editor: Kim Taylor