The CEO of Moderna said on November 29 local time that the omicron variant of the new coronavirus appears to be more infectious than delta, and the large number of mutations on omicron means that the effectiveness of all vaccines may be reduced.
Stephane Bancel made the above comments in an interview with CNBC. 
Stephane Bancel< /p>“We believe this virus is highly contagious…it seems to be more contagious than Delta,” Bancel said. “The efficacy of vaccines, all these vaccines are likely to be declining.
Bancel said that it will take at least a few weeks for the scientific community to better understand vaccine efficacy issues, and it will take 2 to 6 weeks to know whether omicron is more toxic than delta.
According to the WeChat official account of the National Health Commission, studies have shown that if the new coronavirus S protein has K417N, E484A or N501Y mutations, it indicates that the immune escape ability is enhanced; and Omic There are “K417N+E484A+N501Y” triple mutations in the mutant strain of Rong; in addition, there are many other mutations in the mutant strain of Omi Keron that may reduce the neutralizing activity of some monoclonal antibodies. The superposition of mutations may reduce the effect of some antibody drugs on Austria. The protective effect of the Mikeron mutant strain and the ability of existing vaccines to escape immunity need to be further monitored and studied.
There are a total of 50 mutations in the Omi Keron mutant strain. Among them, there are 32 spike protein mutations, which is the most mutated new coronavirus mutant strain found so far.
Coronavirus spike protein (S protein) The mutation is of concern because the spike protein plays a key role in entering human cells: the spike protein can bind to the ACE2 receptor of human cells and is also the main target for mRNA vaccine manufacturing.
Available data show that the mechanism of Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and other vaccines is to use mRNA technology to produce stable and immunogenic spike proteins in human’s own cells to train the human body’s immune system.The epidemic system recognizes the virus and stimulates an immune response.
For the Omi Keron variant, Pfizer stated that if immune escape occurs, the company expects to develop a customized vaccine against the new variant in about 100 days. Two Hong Kong patients infected with Omi Keron mutant strains were vaccinated with mRNA vaccines.