Reasonable to assume that world is nearing end of pandemic, says Moderna CEO

Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna

It is reasonable to assume that the world might be approaching the final stages of the coronavirus pandemic, said Stephane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Moderna.

In an interview with CNBC, Bancel said that the possibility that the world is now at the final stages of the pandemic is a reasonable scenario.

“There’s an 80% chance that as omicron evolves or SarsCov-2 virus evolves, we are going to see less and less virulent viruses,” he said.

He also said there’s another “20% scenario where we see a next mutation, which is more virulent than Omicron.”

“I think we got lucky as a world that Omicron was not very virulent, but still are we see thousands of people dying every day around the planet because of Omicron,” he said.

Data from the World Health Organization showed that there were 15.47 million new cases reported in the last seven days worldwide, and 73,162 deaths in the same period.