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

Even as pub­lic health of­fi­cials re­main guard­ed about their com­ments on the like­li­hood Omi­cron will es­cape the reach of the cur­rent­ly ap­proved Covid-19 vac­cines, there’s grow­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus that we’re fac­ing a vari­ant that threat­ens to over­whelm the vac­cine bar­ri­cades that have been erect­ed.

Stéphane Ban­cel, the CEO of Mod­er­na, one of the lead­ing mR­NA play­ers whose quick vault in­to the mar­kets with a high­ly ef­fec­tive vac­cine cre­at­ed an in­stant multi­bil­lion-dol­lar mar­ket, added his voice to the ris­ing cho­rus ear­ly Tues­day. Ac­cord­ing to Ban­cel, there will be a sig­nif­i­cant drop in ef­fi­ca­cy when the av­er­age im­mune sys­tem is con­front­ed by Omi­cron. The on­ly ques­tion now is: How much?

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