Moderna shares gained after chief medical officer Paul Burton said he suspects the new omicron coronavirus variant may elude current vaccines, and if so, a reformulated shot could be available early in the new year.<\/p>\n
“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks,” Burton said Sunday on the BBC\u2019s \u201cAndrew Marr Show.\u201d<\/p>\n
“If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that\u2019s going to be early 2022 before that\u2019s really going to be available in large quantities,\u201d he said. \u201cThe remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna platform, is that we can move very fast,” he said.<\/p>\n
Shares of Moderna were up 12% in pre-market trading at 04h15 Monday in New York.<\/p>\n
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company mobilized \u201chundreds\u201d of staff early on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the US, after news of the omicron variant spread.<\/p>\n
Protection should still exist, depending on how long ago a person was vaccinated, and for now the best advice is to take one of the current Covid-19 vaccines, Burton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people are on the fence, and you haven\u2019t been vaccinated, get vaccinated,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a dangerous looking virus, but I think we have many tools in our armamentarium now to fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The emergence of the omicron strain has seen countries rush to\u00a0clamp down\u00a0on travel from southern Africa.<\/p>\n
Fears that it could exacerbate a winter Covid surge in the northern hemisphere and\u00a0undermine\u00a0a global economic recovery sent a wave of risk aversion across global markets Friday that\u00a0continued Sunday\u00a0when the Middle East opened for the week.<\/p>\n
Moderna said in a release on Friday that it was working rapidly to test the current vaccine against the omicron variant, and studying two booster candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince early 2021, Moderna has advanced a comprehensive strategy to anticipate new variants of concern,\u201d the company said. \u201cThe company has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to advance new candidates to clinical testing in 60 to 90 days.\u201d<\/p>\n