MASSACHUSETTS: According to Moderna's CEO, existing vaccines would be less effective in beating off Omicron, and it would take months for drugs companies to update vaccines.
After the doubts of Stephane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Moderna, on the effectiveness of vaccines against the new Omicron COVID variant, stock markets around the world have fallen.
The CEO of an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company warned against a "material drop" in the effectiveness of current jabs against Omicron. Bancel said, all the scientists he had talked to were like, "this is not going to be good".
While no deaths have been reported from Omicron yet, it could take weeks to know how infectious and how resistant the strain may prove to vaccines.
First came into knowledge to the World Health Organization (WHO) in South Africa less than a week ago, the new strain has rapidly spread from Africa to the Pacific and Europe to North America as dozens of countries have announced travel restrictions.
US drugmaker Pfizer, Moderna, and the Russian vaccine Sputnik V backers had announced that they were already working on an Omicron-specific vaccine.
