It is unlikely that current corona vaccines will be as effective against the new Omicron variant. This was stated by the CEO of vaccine manufacturer Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, in an interview with the British business newspaper Financial times.
According to Bancel, it can take months before producers can make enough corona vaccines that work optimally against the new variant.
“I don’t think there is a world in which (the effectiveness, ed.) is on the same level as in the delta variant,” he says in the interview. “I think it will be a significant drop. I don’t know how big it will be because we have to wait for the data.”
Meanwhile, the fear of the new Omicron variant is pushing the price of crude oil down sharply. The price of the North Sea Brent oil barrel fell 2.5 percent to $71.62 in early trading, while a barrel of American WTI oil lost 3 percent to $67.87.
The Omicron variant of the coronavirus was discovered last week in South Africa. Since then, it has popped up in more and more countries.