Moderna (MRNA-US) CEO Stephane Bancel said it was “reasonable” to assume that the final phase of the coronavirus pandemic may now be approaching.
“I think that’s a reasonable assumption,” he said when asked if he thought the coronavirus epidemic might be in its final stages.
“With the evolution of Omicron or the evolution of the SarsCov-2 virus, we have an 80% chance of seeing the virus become less virulent,” Bancel said on Wednesday (16th).
Another “20 percent chance is that the next mutant virus will emerge, which will be more virulent than Omicron,” he said.
“I think we’re lucky because Omicron isn’t very toxic, but we’re still seeing thousands of people die from Omicron every day around the world,” he said.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 15.47 million new cases and 73,162 deaths worldwide in the past seven days.
Some studies have pointed out that while the Omicron variant appears to be more contagious, it usually doesn’t make people as sick as Delta.
Health officials also stressed that the threat from Omicron may be receding.
But WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in January that it was dangerous to assume the outbreak was drawing to a close. In fact, he said it was “far from over” and warned that new variants of the virus could emerge as Omicron spreads rapidly around the world.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci also said last month that it remained an “open question” as to whether the Omicron variant represented the last wave of the outbreak.
In January, Moderna announced the start of a clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy of a booster specifically targeting the Omicron variant of the virus.
The first subject in the trial has already received a dose of an Omicron-specific booster, the company said. It expects to recruit about 600 adults 18 and older into two groups for the test.
Separately, Moderna also announced plans to expand its Asian operations.
“We want to expand in Asia because we’re bullish on the importance of the region,” Bancel said. “In fact, this virus is not going away, as we’ve been saying almost from the beginning, it’s going to stay forever. In humans, like the flu, we have to live with it.”
He said economic expansion in Asia was “very exciting” and the company intends to open new subsidiaries in Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
While expanding, Moderna “will continue to expand the manufacturing and distribution of its coronavirus vaccine and future mRNA vaccines and therapeutics,” the U.S. biotech company said in a statement.