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'This is not going to be good': Moderna CEO Bancel warns of a 'material drop' in vaccine efficacy as Omicron spreads

https://endpts.com/this-is-not-going-to-be-good-moderna-ceo-bancel-warns-of-a-material-drop-in-vaccine-efficacy-as-omicron-spreads/

“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level … we had with [the] Delta [variant],” Bancel told the Financial Times. “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”

Echoing remarks by Dartmouth professor and Adagio CEO Tillman Gerngross, Bancel points to the large cluster of mutations on the spike protein, presenting a major departure from the original virus that sparked a pandemic that roiled the world, killing more than 5 million people and blitzing the global economy.

Bancel also told the FT that it would be months before a bespoke vaccine could be produced at scale, with the possibility of producing 2 to 3 billion doses next year. He also warned that it would be risky to shift production away from their current vaccine.

“I think it’s super worrisome,” Gerngross told Endpoints News over the weekend. “If I just look at our analysis of looking at people who have been vaccinated, we look at their antibody response, we look at where they bind, and we look at how these mutations impact those binding events, it is a grim situation.”