US biotech giants Moderna has said that a COVID-19 booster shot is likely to be ready by August 2022, but the company is still in the process of gathering clinical data on the efficacy of an omicron-specific booster in comparison to extant COVID-19 vaccines.
In an interview with Reuters, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said that his company could have an omicron-specific booster ready by August, before autumn when vulnerable groups may be in need of booster shots, but said that the decision of which booster to roll out was still up in the air.
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“We believe a booster will be needed. I don’t know yet if it is going to be the existing vaccine, omicron-only, or bivalent: omicron and existing vaccine, two mRNA in one dose,” Bancel told Reuters, adding that the decision on which booster to roll out would be taken by Moderna in the coming months after the acquisition of relevant clinical data.
The Moderna CEO went on to say that his company was developing a a so-called pan-vaccine that would simultaneously protect vaccine takers from the flu, COVID-19, and other similar respiratory diseases. Bancel said that in the best-case scenario, this pan-vaccine would be ready by August 2023, adding that price of these pan-vaccines would be “very similar” to that of high-dose flu vaccines.
Bancel’s comments come a couple of months after Moderna announced clinical trials of an omicron-specific jab for early 2022, and mere weeks after it started clinical tests of the omicron-specific booster in January 2022.
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A couple of weeks earlier, Moderna’s Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine also received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), making the company first vaccine manufacturer to receive the full approval status from the FDA.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine uses mRNA technology to provoke an immune response, technology that is similar to the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
