Moderna CEO predicts the end of the COVID-19 pandemic within a year



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Moderna’s chief executive on Thursday said he believes the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic could be over within a year as vaccine production increases and doses are delivered around the world, even as many low-income countries are waiting for inoculations.

The CEO of the pharmaceutical company, Stéphane Bancel, told Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung that he believed there would soon be enough vaccines to bite “everyone on this earth”, comparing a future with the virus to that of an influenza season.

“We will find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the flu,” Bancel told the outlet, saying he predicted that future within the next 12 months. “You can either get vaccinated and have a good winter. Or you don’t and you risk getting sick and maybe even ending up in the hospital.

He continued, “If you look at the expansion of industry-wide production capacity over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of next year to keep everyone. world on this earth can be vaccinated. “

Bancel added that those who choose not to be vaccinated will be immune “naturally”, as they will likely get the highly transmissible delta strain of the virus.

The delta variant has wreaked havoc around the world, plunging plans to reopen America into chaos and leading to a dramatic increase in new infections despite a wide range of safe and effective vaccines.

The Washington Post notes that about 80% of citizens in wealthier countries have already received their first doses of a vaccine. But in low-income countries, that figure drops to around 20%, a statistic that has troubled global health officials, especially as some countries have launched recall campaigns for vulnerable people.

The Food and Drug Administration this week approved a third vaccine for people inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Americans 65 years of age and older, as well as for those with high-risk conditions or at risky workplaces. higher exposure.

The UN chief, who has long argued that rich countries should wait until all countries are able to immunize large swathes of their populations, said the uneven distribution of vaccines around the world was a global “obscenity”.

“This is a moral indictment against the state of our world,” Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders this week. “It’s obscenity. We passed the science test. But we get an F in ethics.



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