https://www.ft.com/content/27def1b9-b9c8-47a5-8e06-72e432e0838f
The chief executive of Moderna has predicted that existing vaccines will be much less effective at tackling Omicron than earlier strains of coronavirus and warned it would take months before pharmaceutical companies could manufacture new variant-specific jabs at scale.
Stéphane Bancel said the high number of Omicron mutations on the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells, and the rapid spread of the variant in South Africa suggested that the current crop of vaccines may need to be modified next year.
“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level . . . we had with [the] Delta [variant],” Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He added: “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like, ‘This is not going to be good’.”
However, Bancel said scientists were worried because 32 of the 50 mutations in the Omicron variant are on the spike protein, which current vaccines focus on to boost the human body’s immune system to combat Covid.
Most experts thought such a highly mutated variant would not emerge for another year or two, Bancel added.
A Stanford University study of a Delta outbreak at a California prison published last month found that Moderna’s jab was 56.6 per cent effective against infection — substantially lower than the level in studies conducted before the emergence of the variant, the researchers said.
But he said it would take several months before an Omicron-specific vaccine could be produced at scale, and suggested there might be a case for giving more potent boosters to the elderly or people with compromised immune systems in the meantime.
“[Moderna] and Pfizer cannot get a billion doses next week. The maths doesn’t work. But could we get the billion doses out by the summer? Sure,” said Bancel, who predicted Moderna could make a total of 2bn-3bn doses in 2022.
Bancel also hit out at critics who have accused vaccine makers of not doing enough to support rollouts in developing countries such as South Africa, where only a quarter of the population is fully inoculated, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“This was mostly a policy decision by the rich countries. In the US, we were told we had no choice but to give 60 per cent of our output to the US government. That was not a Moderna decision, that was a US government decision,” he said.
Bancel also said there was a surplus of jabs earmarked for Africa and that 70m Moderna vaccines were sitting in warehouses because Covax, an international body tasked with supplying low-income nations, or individual governments had not taken delivery of them.
“We are running out of space,” he said. “It’s because either they don’t have customs documents, or they don’t have fridge space, or because the ability to get doses in arms is a challenge.”
You mean the experts were wrong again? I just don't get it.
I can sense the frustration Bancel has with the likely possibility that his company has to produce another "2bn-3bn" doses. I'm sure shareholders are wrecked.
So far, nobody knows anything about Omicron. Other than people need more injections.
It's also interesting that Moderna was forced to "give" 60% of their output to the US. Who else were they going to sell it to?
If the US didn't take part ownership of the patent, then Moderna wouldn't have made billions of dollars off of its vaccine. Besides, it was the former Moderna scientists who now work at NIH who worked so hard on the mRNA technology.
I'm almost positive that Bancel is such a good guy that he didn't want to be forced to sell 60% of his vaccines to the greedy US. He would have much rather given them away to the 3rd world for free (even though there are 70 million doses earmarked for Africa that are rotting in a warehouse).
Nonetheless, we can all empathize with Big Pharma over this new variant. They're going to be forced to make billions of dollars just because they care about us so much.
Thanks, Big Pharma!
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