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Americans could get booster shots for modern vaccines this year
Moderna said it hopes to provide booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US by the end of the year.
Booster vaccines are designed to protect against variants of the coronavirus that cause COVID-19.
The spread of variants and slow vaccine launches have led to an increase in cases globally.
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COVID-19 vaccines won't stop anytime soon.
Moderna said Wednesday that Americans could begin receiving booster vaccines later this year to protect against variants of the coronavirus.
"Countries that have already achieved high vaccine coverage are likely to be ready to shift their focus to boosters in 2022 and possibly even from the end of this year," Corinne M. Le Goff, Moderna's chief business officer, said. during a call with investors.
Le Goff said countries like the US that inoculate their populations quickly could start getting booster shots soon, but because nearly 5% of the world's population has been vaccinated, most countries would continue to give residents initial vaccinations.
"I hope that this summer the vaccine for a booster will be authorized so that we can help people get a booster before fall, so that we all have a normal fall and not a fall and winter as we have just seen in the last six months." . Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in an interview with Insider on Tuesday.
Read more: GlaxoSmithKline stumbled upon COVID-19 shots. Now it faces an exodus of American talent and an uncertain future as a world leader in vaccines.
The United States had administered more than 85 million doses of Moderna's two-dose COVID-19 vaccine as of mid-April. Nearly half of American adults have received at least one shot of a vaccine from Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although vaccines licensed for emergency use in many countries are highly effective, delays in launching and the spread of variants have led to an increase in COVID-19 cases globally. Many European countries have imposed closures and curfews in the "third wave" of the pandemic, with COVID-19 cases reaching record levels in India and Brazil this spring.
Epidemiologists have predicted that COVID-19 will become endemic and will likely continue to spread as a mild flu-like illness after the pandemic subsides. Researchers can regularly produce booster vaccines to protect against new variants, similar to how they develop flu vaccines each season.
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