Speaking at the World Economic Forum, CEO Stéphane Bancel said Moderna aim to create a combined flu and COVID vaccine
The new vaccine would be built for flu, COVID and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which usually creates mild cold-like symptoms.
This vaccine would be created in time for Autumn of 2023, if clinical trials go well.
According to Bancel, taking a COVID vaccine will become an ingrained part of life for the next few years – in countries where vaccination is accessible.
Speaking about the inevitability of ongoing vaccination, Bancel said: “Our goal is to be able to have a single annual booster so that we don’t have compliance issues where people don’t want to get two to three shots a winter, but they get one dose where they get a booster for corona, a booster for flu and RSV.”
How much can Moderna manufacture?
Currently, Moderna expects to ship two to three million doses of existing COVID vaccines in 2022.
In November, 2021, the company announced that it was testing more vaccine candidates: a higher booster load, an Omicron-specific design and two multivalent boosters. Multivalent vaccines are essentially multi-taskers, capable of efficiently stopping different types of mutations – such as Omicron, or Delta. At the moment, prior infection by COVID gives an eerie 19% protection against the Omicron variant.
