February 17, 2022: -Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said it’s “reasonable” to think that we may be approaching the final stages of the pandemic.

“I think that is a reasonable scenario,” he told CNBC when asked about views that the Covid-19 pandemic may now be in its final stages.

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

He also said there’s another “20% scenario where we see a coming 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 going every day around the planet because of omicron,” he said.

According to the World Health Organization, it was15.47 million new cases were reported in the last seven days worldwide and 73,162 deaths in the same period.

We want to expand in Asia because of the importance of that region. The fact that this virus is not going away will stay with humans forever, like flu, and we’d have to live with it.

Some studies have shown that while the omicron variant appears more contagious, it doesn’t make people as sick as delta.

Health officials have also highlighted that omicron’s threat may be fading.

But the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in January that it’s dangerous assuming the pandemic is approaching its endgame. He said it’s “nowhere near over” and cautioned that new variants would likely emerge as omicron spreads rapidly across the globe.

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci also said last month that it’s still an “open question” about if the omicron variant will mark the final wave of the pandemic.

In January, Moderna announced a clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy of a booster shot that specifically targets the omicron variant.

According to the company, the first participant in the trial has already received a dose of the omicron-specific booster shot. It expects to enroll about 600 adult participants ages 18 and over to be split between two groups.

“The reason we want to expand in Asia is the importance of that region,” he told CNBC.

Bancel said he finds Asia’s economic expansion “fascinating” and intends to open new subsidiaries in Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The expansion is coming as Moderna “continues to scale up the manufacturing and distribution of its COVID-19 vaccine and future mRNA vaccines and therapeutics,” the U.S. biotech firm said.