Several years after the pandemic began, scientists noticed some signs of its final stage. Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel was the first who managed to see them. However, it is quite logical that the CEO of the US biotech company could hardly be encouraged by such a discovery.
Stephane Bancel said it could be “reasonable” to assume that the world might be approaching the final stages of the pandemic. “I think that is a reasonable scenario,” he said. “I think there’s an 80% chance that as omicron evolves or SarsCov-2 virus evolves, we are going to see less and less virulent viruses,” Moderna’s CEO explained. Notably, Moderna is one of the main developers of the coronavirus vaccine. He also added that there is another “20% scenario where we see a next mutation, which is more virulent than omicron.” The recent studies have unveiled that while the omicron variant turned out to be more contagious, it does not make people as sick as the delta strain does. In addition, representatives of the healthcare system pinpointed that omicron’s threat was fading.
However, not all health officials are optimistic. Thus, in January, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that it could be too early to assume that the pandemic was approaching its end. He emphasized that it was “nowhere near over,” saying that new virus variants might emerge amid a rapid spread of the omicron across the world.
