The Owner of "Moderna": Vaccines are Less Effective against Omicron

The head of drugmaker Moderna said Covid-19 vaccines were unlikely to be as effective against the coronavirus Omicron variant as before, raising new concerns in financial markets about the trajectory of the pandemic, Reuters reported.

"I don't think there is a world where [efficiency] is at the same level. . . what we had with Delta," Moderna CEO Stefan Bancel told the Financial Times. "I think it will be a material decline. I just don't know how much, because we have to wait for the data. But all the scientists I've talked to. . . are like "it's not going to be good."

Vaccine resistance could lead to more illness and hospitalizations and prolong the pandemic, and his comments sparked the sale of growth-exposed assets such as oil, stocks and the Australian dollar. Bancel added that the large number of mutations in the protein peak that the virus uses to infect human cells means that the current vaccine harvest likely to need to be modified. Earlier, he told CNBC that it could take months to begin delivering a vaccine that works against Omicron. Fear of the new variant, despite a lack of information on its seriousness, has already delayed some economic reopening plans and re-imposed some travel and movement restrictions.

/Focus