The vaccines against covid-19 developed so far may have difficulties to combat the omicron variant and it will take months to develop a new effective immunizer against this strain, the CEO of the American laboratory Moderna told the Financial Times.
Stephane Bancel told the newspaper, in an interview published on Tuesday, that data on the effectiveness of vaccines against the new strain will be available in the next two weeks, but that scientists are not optimistic.
“All the scientists I’ve talked to… feel that ‘this is not going to be good,’” he told the paper.
Bancel’s warning coincided with an emergency meeting of G7 health ministers about the new variant, which is spreading around the world and has prompted several countries to close their borders and resume travel restrictions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that omicron represents a “very high” risk.
Bancel explained that scientists are concerned that 32 of the 50 mutations detected in the omicron variant are found in the protein ‘spike’ (or spike), a part of the virus that vaccines use to boost the immune system against the coronavirus.
Moderna’s CEO told the Financial Times that there could be a “considerable drop” in the effectiveness of current omicron vaccines.
Moderna is already working on a specific vaccine against omicron, as is the American laboratory Pfizer.
Bancel said that Moderna hopes to deliver between two and three billion doses of this immunizer in 2022, but warned that concentrating all production on vaccines against the omicron variant would be dangerous, as other strains are still in circulation.
An alarmist tone that contrasts with the efforts of politicians to try to reassure the population about the omicron.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that the new variant “is no reason to panic.”
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