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After a lull on Monday when international financial markets showed some stability after terrible Friday over Omicron fears, the last day of November began with new worries related to the new Covid variant.
After Moderna’s CEO predicted Tuesday that the vaccines against the coronavirus may not be very effective in combating Omicron, and that the scientists may have to work harder to find more potent vaccines, markets went into a downward spiral, even though it was not as bad as Friday. (https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/11/30/moderna-ceos-comments-jolt-markets)
Stéphane Bancel in an interview to the Financial Times claimed that pharmaceutical companies could take months to come up with a vaccine that could effectively tackle Omicron. What concerned the markets was that the existing vaccines could be modified only sometime next year.
Regarding the effectiveness of the existing vaccines, he said, “I just don’t know how much, because we need to wait for the data,” he said. “But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are, like, ‘This is not going to be good.’” (https://www.ft.com/content/27def1b9-b9c8-47a5-8e06-72e432e0838f)
One question that scientists are yet to conclusively answer is if Omicron is as bad as it looks. The World Health Organization (WHO) may have said about the “overall global risk” from Omicron being “very high,” but it is only after the scientists prove that it could be worse than the Delta that could lead to a worse turmoil in international markets. For now, everybody is keeping their fingers crossed.
After Bancel opinion, Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, which created Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, in the meanwhile has said that people who are already vaccinated would be protected from a severe form of disease from Omicron and that government should concentrate on increasing the booster doses. (https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2021/nov/30/markets-moderna-covid-vaccines-omicron-ftse-inflation-jerome-powell-business-live)
Unless there is clarity on the effectiveness of Omicron, speculation is likely to continue and the world markets are likely to react to every news.
Read more:
Was Omicron present in Europe days before it was discovered?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/30/world/omicron-variant-covid
A pandemic treaty?:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/30/omicron-pandemic-treaty-who/