Moderna CEO says when to expect COVID booster to be available



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Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel revealed in an interview with “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday that his company’s COVID-19 booster vaccine could be available to the public as the delta variant spreads across the world.

He noted the company “is waiting for a bit more data,” but said in some countries the Moderna recall could be available for certain demographics “as early as September.”

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Bancel told host Maria Bartiromo that “we have already tried in humans a booster of the South African strain, the beta virus and we announced this morning that we are also working on the delta booster and that the data is going come together In the coming months. ”

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He noted that “when we see all the data, we will take the best booster”.

Bancel then explained that some countries, including Germany, France and Israel, indicated that the elderly population, which received the vaccine during the first wave in December, January and February last, could “receive the booster as early as September. “.

He stressed the urgency of providing booster injections to this population given that respiratory viruses are “more dangerous in autumn and winter”.

“And so it is important that people who were vaccinated a long time ago, especially with vaccines that had less efficacy, are protected so that they are not hospitalized this fall and winter,” he said. at Bartiromo.

In May, the company announced that two of Moderna’s booster shots of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine under study elicited an immune response against SARS-CoV-2 and the variants first identified in South Africa and the United States. Brazil.

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A variant-specific booster injection resulted in higher levels of neutralizing antibodies against the affected South African variant with fewer side effects than a third injection of the original vaccine.

Bancel told Bartiromo on Thursday that the company is “still learning a lot” about the delta variant.

“It’s clearly very contagious,” he noted, adding that hospitalizations have increased in many places across the country, especially in areas with many unvaccinated people.

He pointed to current data, which revealed that those who received a third dose of a Moderna vaccine had “42 times more antibodies with the same vaccine as a third dose” compared to the level of antibodies provided by a second dose.

“So we think we have the tools to be there to help and continue to keep Americans safe so that we can run the economy and kids can go to school,” Bancel said.

Bancel provided updates to his company’s COVID-19 vaccine as head of the World Health Organization [WHO] calls for a moratorium on the administration of boosters to ensure availability of doses in countries where few people have received their first doses.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the appeal mainly to the richest countries which have far outnumbered the developing world in the number of people vaccinated.

Moderna shipped about 100 million doses of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. government in the first quarter of this year and Bancel revealed on Thursday that 200 million doses had been shipped in the second quarter.

“We doubled production between the first and second quarters,” Bancel told Bartiromo, adding that the company was on track to deliver between 800 million and one billion doses this year.

He noted that next year, depending on the dose of the booster, which has yet to be determined as the company awaits clinical data, Moderna will likely ship between two and three billion doses.

“We should be able to at least double production next year, maybe even triple it,” Bancel said.

Moderna reported profits and revenues above Wall Street estimates and said its COVID-19 vaccine was 93% effective within six months of receiving a second dose.

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Jonathan Garber of FOX Business, Kayla Rivas of Fox News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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