Moderna CEO on COVID vaccines: Not everyone will need an annual COVID-19 booster
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel speaks with Anjalee Khemlani at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit about the COVID vaccine and why boosters will be necessary each year.
Video Transcript
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: The one question that everyone has is, is the COVID vaccine going to become that? Is it going to be an annual COVID booster for a very long time to come, or maybe for the rest of our lives? And how do you how do you merge that with the fact that there is already low uptake of this new variant booster?
STEPHANE BANCEL: So I think it's interesting. The uptake is actually stronger than seasonal flu from a data I've seen recently. So we'll have to see, toward the end of the season, what does it look like. It's the first time, we're going to be more in a "pandemic setting" given the pandemic setting. So I think we'll be smarter in the move also.
But the current data show it is a better uptake by the seasonal flu shot. And I think it's going to be like the flu, which is, again, if you're 25 years old, you need an annual booster every year if you're healthy. You might want it to protect older people. You might want it because you don't want to get sick, and miss work, or miss vacation or so on. But I think it's going to be very similar to flu where the key is going to be people at high risk-- people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidity, people with cancer and of a condition, or have transplants.
And that's really important to think about. And if you look at it, around the world, that is 1.5 billion people. So it's a lot of people that's going to need an annual booster. And people that are younger are going to have to decide for themselves what they want to do. I mean, the example I always use is myself. You know, I've been taking a flu shot for the last 20 years. Just on 50. So in my 30s, in my 40s, I took an annual flu shot.
Is it because I was worried of being hospitalized? Of course not. I just didn't want to be sick. I wanted to be able to work. And I believe that the best thing we can all do in medicine is prevention. And vaccine is one of the most amazing [INAUDIBLE] to whatever will happen. So I took a vaccine against flu so I didn't get sick, and so I could have a normal life, and work, and take my vacation to be with my friends and family.
