NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – After a severe setback on Tuesday, the US stock exchanges started another attempt at recovery in the middle of the week. However, profits crumbled noticeably in the course of trading. Once again, concerns about the Coronavirus variant Omikron were widespread. News made the rounds that the confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa have almost doubled since Tuesday and that a first Omicron case has now also appeared in the USA. This virus variant has also been detected in the first cases in Great Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Brazil.
Omikron is currently classified as a matter of concern because of its rapid spread and numerous mutations. How ill the virus actually makes cannot yet be estimated due to the lack of sufficient data and since mainly young people have been infected so far.
Der Dow Jones Industrial gave up the majority of its early gains and was only 0.12 percent up at 34,526.35 points around two hours before the close of trading. The market-wide S&P 500 
advanced 0.47 percent to 4588.65 points. The selection index rose 100 on the Nasdaq by 0.32 percent to 16 187.80 points.
On the data side, the main focus was primarily on sentiment in US industry, which did not brighten as much as expected in November.
Among the individual values on the US stock exchanges, papers from vaccine manufacturers such as Biontech, Moderna or Novavax gave up further parts of their latest profits and were down 2.3 to 7.7 percent.
The shares of Merck & Co, meanwhile, rose by 1.0 percent, because an advisory committee of the US drug agency FDA recommended emergency approval for a corona drug from the pharmaceutical manufacturer. The recommendation is not binding on the FDA, but the authority usually follows the assessment of the consultant.
A cautious outlook brocked the shares of the software manufacturer Salesforce a loss of 9.2 percent, which they were bottom of the Dow. However, business in the past quarter went better than expected.
The situation was similar at the information technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which had also initially disappointed with its outlook. But here the mood turned in the course of trading. After initial losses, the papers recently gained 0.9 percent. Among other things, strong incoming orders and a solid cash inflow were noted on the market.
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