Moderna president says there will be ‘chronic’ need for coronavirus booster shots

The booster will help protect from variant strains of the virus

Virus Outbreak Japan Comapnies (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The president of pharmaceutical company Moderna believes that people will require Covid-19 booster shots in the future to maintain their protection from the coronavirus.

Dr Stephen Hoge, the company's president, told the Associated Press during a Q&A session that he believed a third shot – following the initial two-dose vaccination offered by Moderna – would provide longer-lasting protection.

Dr Hoge called the third shot Moderna's "variant booster”, which aims to extend the effectiveness of the vaccine to protect people from variant strains.

"None of us want to be in a situation next November where we have to go into another lockdown. We've been updating our vaccine to make sure it boosts you back up. That's the variant booster that we're going to have available in the fourth quarter," he said.

According to the doctor, the new variant boosters will take several months to complete.

"With the first version of the vaccine, we did it in about five months, but we had to do the large clinical trials. We won't have to do that now. For a booster targeting variants, we could do it in about three months," he said.

The company is currently testing vaccines and possible booster shots that could be administered to young people.

Thus far, more than 217 million doses of Moderna's vaccine have been distributed in the US.

Last week, the company struck a supply deal with the US for $3.3bn in exchange for another 200 million vaccine doses.

According to the US Department of Defence, Moderna will produce the additional doses at its facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with products expected for delivery by the end of March 2022.

It plans to provide the government with another 110 million doses of the vaccine in the year's fourth quarter – alongside the "variant booster" – and another 90 million in the first quarter of 2022.

The majority of vaccinated Americans have either received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, and it appears those companies will stay at the forefront of the vaccine effort.

To accommodate this, Moderna is expanding its US-based production facilities in order to create at least 800 million more doses of the vaccine.