The large number of mutations in the omicron variant of the Corona virus, said Stefan Bancel, CEO of Moderna, to evade the protection provided by current vaccines, which requires the development of new vaccines. . Which caused the decline of risky assets.

According to Arab Net, the CEO appeared to have played down expectations that new vaccines might be ready soon, however, he said in an interview with the Financial Times that the matter had It takes months for drug companies to develop and deploy updated vaccines that they can deliver in large numbers.


He said there was no evidence that current doses would provide the same level of protection against the omicron variant as they do against delta, and there would be a substantial reduction in their efficacy.


Bancel was quoted as saying: I don't know how much just because we need to wait for the data. All the scientists I spoke to confirmed that this wouldn't be good.


Bancel's speech frightened the markets, as stocks in Asia fell along with futures contracts for US and European indexes and crude oil.


Moderna said last week that it was already studying booster doses designed to anticipate mutations such as those seen in the omicron variant and would quickly introduce a candidate that specifically targets this new strain.


This comes as current vaccines from pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Pfizer, Biontech, AstraZeneca, and Johnson have shown the ability to help reduce the risk of severe infection and death from previous virus strains, although they work less against the more transmissible delta variant. /p>


Research is still underway to answer a wide range of questions, such as whether Omicron causes the same level of disease as old mutations of the virus, whether it can evade protection from previous vaccines and infections, and whether it will be able to beat existing strains in terms of prevalence. .


Moderna is showing a more pessimistic tone than Pfizer, with CEO Albert Borla earlier saying that Omicron will be identified within two to three weeks to see how well the current vaccines against Omicron will be tolerated, and even in the worst case, the current vaccine formula could Retains some efficacy against the highly mutated strain.


Burla said Pfizer would have a vaccine targeting Omicron ready within 100 days if needed.


In turn, the Chinese vaccine manufacturer, Sinovac, is also evaluating the performance of its vaccine against Omicron and the need to obtain a new dose.


The company said it can quickly create a new vaccine and manufacture it on a large scale quickly.