RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna, a U.S. pharmaceutical company known for its Covid-19 mRNA vaccine, has provided a forecast that the coronavirus pandemic will officially end in mid-2022.
“If you look at the expansion of production capacities across the industry over the last six months, by the middle of next year, there should be enough doses available for everyone on this Earth to be vaccinated,” Bancel said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper of reference ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’.
Moderna is in the process of moving its European headquarters to Basel, Switzerland.
He said that injections would soon be available even for infants and booster doses for those who require them.
According to Bancel, the situation with Covid-19 will be similar to the flu. “You can get vaccinated and have a good winter. Or you don’t and risk getting sick and possibly even end up in the hospital.”
When asked when humanity will be able to emerge from the pandemic and return to everyday life, he replied, “As of today, in a year, I guess.”
Bancel insisted that those vaccinated “undoubtedly” will need a booster shot at some point. He said he expects younger people to receive a booster shot every three years and older people once a year.
Moderna’s booster doses contain half a dose of the active ingredient compared with the original shot, giving the company an additional opportunity to ramp up production, he said.
“Vaccine volume is the biggest limiting factor. With half the dose, we would have three billion doses available worldwide by next year instead of just two billion,” the CEO explained.
When asked how safe the Moderna vaccine is, given the lack of long-term experience, he said there were two answers: “My two daughters are vaccinated with Moderna, as are my wife, my parents, my brothers, my nephews and nieces. I have been active in the vaccination field for 25 years and am very concerned about safety. Half of the injected molecules break down within four hours of vaccination, the rest after 48 hours.”
Years ago, independent and peer-reviewed studies determined, which the manager emphasized, that nothing from the Moderna mRNA gets into the DNA core that could cause long-term damage. He said the company has also made the vaccine safer in other ways in recent years.