Moderna shares gained after chief medical officer Paul Burton said he suspects the new Omicron coronavirus variant may elude current vaccines, and if so, a reformulated shot could be available early in the new year.
“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks,” said Burton.
“If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that’s going to be early 2022 before that’s really going to be available in large quantities,” he said. “The remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna platform, is that we can move very fast,” he said.
If people are on the fence, and you haven’t been vaccinated, get vaccinated. This is a dangerous looking virus.
— Moderna chief medical officer Paul Burton
The biotech company mobilised “hundreds” of staff on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the US, after news of the Omicron variant spread.
Protection should still exist, depending on how long ago a person was vaccinated, and for now the best advice is to take one of the current Covid-19 vaccines, Burton said.
“If people are on the fence, and you haven’t been vaccinated, get vaccinated,” he said. “This is a dangerous looking virus, but I think we have many tools in our armamentarium now to fight it.”
Moderna said it was working rapidly to test the current vaccine against the Omicron variant, and studying two booster candidates.
“Since early 2021, Moderna has advanced a comprehensive strategy to anticipate new variants of concern,” the company said. “The company has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to advance new candidates to clinical testing in 60 to 90 days.”
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— Bloomberg
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