Moderna’s CEO doubtful the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines will be as effective against Omicron variant as they have been against Delta

• Moderna’s CEO said current COVID-19 vaccines won’t be as effective against Omicron as they have been against Delta.
• Stéphane Bancel told FT “all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like ‘this is not going to be good.'”
• Omicron was first identified by the World Health Organization as a “variant of concern” on November 24.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said it’s unlikely that current COVID-19 vaccines will be as effective against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus as they have been against the Delta variant.

“There is no world, I think, where (the effectiveness) is the same level . . . we had with Delta,” Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview.

“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,” he continued. “But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like ‘this is not going to be good.'”

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa on November 9 and reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 24.

The WHO has labeled Omicron “a variant of concern” but said it is not yet clear if it is more transmissible or if its symptoms are more severe than other variants. However, the organization said some of the mutations on its spike protein are associated with higher transmission and decreased antibody protection.

Bancel told the FT it would likely take a couple of weeks to test existing vaccines’ effectiveness against the Omicron variant and several months for Moderna and Pfizer to test and manufacture an Omicron-specific vaccine.

In the meantime, Bancel criticized Covax, the global coalition tasked with ensuring fair vaccine distribution, for failing to distribute vaccines to poorer nations, including the African countries where it is believed the variant originated. 

“This was mostly a policy decision by the rich countries. In the US, we were told we had no choice but to give 60% of our output to the US government. That was not a Moderna decision. That was a US government decision,” he told the outlet. 

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Pfizer was already working on an Omicron-specific vaccine and added that he believed the company’s oral COVID-19 pill would be effective against the new variant. 

“The good news when it comes to our treatment, it was designed with that in mind. It was designed with the fact that most mutations are coming in the spikes,” Bourla said. “So that gives me a very high level of confidence that the treatment will not be affected — our oral treatment will not be affected by this virus.”

“I don’t think that the result will be the vaccines don’t protect,” he added. “I think the result could be, which we don’t know yet, the vaccines protect less,” he said.