Moderna boss predicts current vaccines may be less effective against Omicron covid

Moderna boss predicts current vaccines may be less effective against Omicron covid

The chief executive of the US drugmaker Moderna has predicted that existing vaccines will be less effective against Omicron than they have been against the Delta version, sending global stock markets sharply lower.

Stéphane Bancel said while it would take two weeks to get data on how the existing vaccines perform against the new Covid variant – and whether it causes severe disease – it would take several months to tweak the current vaccines to tackle Omicron.

“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level … we had with Delta,” Bancel told the Financial Times.