Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel warned on Wednesday that the coronavirus “won’t go away” and that the world will have to live with it “forever”.
“We will live with this virus forever, we think,” said Bancel.
Bancel made the comment during a speech at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, CNBC reports. He said health officials should always be on the lookout for new variants of COVID-19 to produce new vaccines and that “SARS-CoV-2 is not going away.”
Multiple new variants have been detected, one from the UK being significantly more contagious. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that a new, separate variant had also been discovered in Japan.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said of the new variants: “The more the virus spreads, the more likely it is for new changes in the virus. In particular, the transmissibility of some variants of the virus appears to be increasing.”
Vaccine trials have shown that the vaccine with two doses of Moderna provides about 95 percent immunity to the coronavirus. Moderna officials said at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday that the vaccine is expected to provide immunity for at least a year.
Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said the biotechnology company would investigate whether a third booster shot would prolong the vaccine’s immunity.
“We think there is an opportunity to boost, especially those at high risk, should you need it,” Zaks said.
As CNBC points out, the WHO currently states that there are four coronaviruses that are endemic around the world, but none are as contagious as SARS-CoV-2.