Cambridge, Massachusetts | The chief executive of Moderna has predicted that existing vaccines will be much less effective at tackling omicron than earlier strains of COVID-19 and warned it would take months before pharmaceutical companies can manufacture new variant-specific jabs at scale.

Stephane Bancel said the high number of omicron mutations on the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells, and the rapid spread of the variant in South Africa, suggested the current crop of vaccines may need to be modified next year.

Financial Times