According to media reports,$Moderna (MRNA.US) $ CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview that it is expected that the current vaccine will be far less effective in dealing with the early COVID-19 strain. He warned that it would take several months for pharmaceutical companies to produce a new vaccine on a large scale to deal with the strain.

Stephane Bancel said the strain had a large number of mutations and spread rapidly in South Africa, indicating that the current batch of vaccine may need to be updated next year. “I don't think any (vaccine) has reached the same level of efficacy; this will be a substantial decline. I don't know how much it will drop because we still have to wait for the data.”

In August of this year, Moderna announced that people who have received two doses of the vaccine “will develop antibodies within six months to fight against worrying variants, including the Delta virus.”

However, research shows that the company's vaccine is not as effective as early virus strains in preventing the Delta virus outbreak.