CNN World announced on January 18, 2022 Moderna’s combined booster should be available by fall of 2023 earliest. This is according to CEO Stéphane Bancel who admitted this did not mean all countries would have it. He hopes his Moderna COVID-Flu booster will bring resolution for people ‘wary about getting multiple shots every winter’.
Some Virus Experts Pour Cold Water Over the Idea
Market Watch put a different spin on the story the previous day. The question at issue is whether the pandemic will subside to another flu requiring the same booster. Stéphane Bancel is working on the assumption this will be the case. However, others are less supportive of a Moderna COVID-Flu booster.
The Moderna CEO made the announcement at a virtual gathering of World Economic Forum on Monday. However, other members of the panel were less convinced. One was Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the U.S. president, and director of Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Dr. Fauci’s position was we would have to wait a while longer for the virus to become more manageable following on greater population immunity.
‘I think if you look at the history of infectious diseases,’ he began. ‘We’ve only eradicated one infectious disease…and that’s smallpox, and that’s not going to happen with this virus.’ To his mind the pandemic would only reach endemic status when it no longer disrupted society.
So Where Does That Leave the Moderna COVID-Flu Booster?
The answer to that depends on who is speaking at the time. Annelies Wilder-Smith was also on the World Economic Forum panel. She is professor of emerging infectious diseases at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and still hoping for ‘the best case scenario’.
However, she did add the world ‘should be prepared for the worst case of another variant with high transmissibility and high mortality’. Therefore we continue to travel through uncharted waters buoyed up by hope. Dr. Fauci commented ‘If we all pulled together we’d be much better off’. But for now it seems we still face a rampant virus partly beyond our control.
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