Moderna CEO makes surprising admission about COVID vaccine booster shots for young people: 'Decide for themselves'

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made an eyebrow-raising admission about his company's COVID-19 vaccine booster shot this week.

What did Bancel say?

Speaking with Yahoo Finance, Bancel questioned whether young people will need future COVID vaccine boosters.

In fact, he appeared to limit those who may need an annual booster to vulnerable populations, such as older people and those with comorbidities. For such individuals, the annual booster will be akin to the seasonal flu shot.

"I think it's going to be like the flu," Bancel said.

"If you're a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year if you're healthy? You might want it," he added, "but I think it's going to be similar to flu, where it's going to be people at high risk, people above 50 years of age, people with co-morbidities, people with cancer and other conditions, you know, [people with] transplants."

Bancel estimated that 1.5 billion people fall into "high risk" categories. But for those who don't? He actually endorsed freedom of individuals to make their own decisions.

"People that are younger are going to have to decide for themselves what they want to do," Bancel said.

Moderna CEO on COVID vaccines: Not everyone will need an annual COVID-19 boosterwww.youtube.com

The admission is particularly noteworthy because it comes from someone who profits if Moderna sells more of its COVID vaccine booster shots.

Just last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized children (ages 6 to 17) to receive Moderna's Omicron-specific booster shot.

Anything else?

Fortunately, the Biden administration is also accepting that COVID-19 will be treated like the seasonal flu in the future.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that, looking forward with the COVID-19 pandemic, in the absence of a dramatically different variant, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual, updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population," Dr. Anthony Fauci said last month.