RE: Boom21 Jan 2021 13:10
GSK partner VIR lays out the real need for treatment
It’s important for antibodies to 'control the virus as it evolves': Vir Biotechnology CEO
George Scangos, Vir Biotechnology President and CEO joins Yahoo Finance Live to weigh in on the surge of COVID-19 cases across the U.S. and discuss why it’s crucial to rollout COVID-19 vaccines efficiently.
Video Transcript
- Let's not forget the added efforts here coming through in terms of the therapies for people struggling through COVID as well. We've seen antibody ****tails play a significant role in all of that. And one of the companies pairing up with GlaxoSmithKline on that effort has been Vir Biotech. That company has seen about a 30% boost here year to date for their share prices as they continue to work through antibody-tested treatments. For more on that, we're joined here by Vir Biotechnology President and CEO George Scangos joins us here, alongside Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani.
And George, appreciate you coming on here. You guys mainly have two right now that are working their way through the trial process. Obviously, as I said, a lot of attention on the vaccine side, a lot of excitement there to celebrate. But how important is the progress you guys are making through here and playing your part on treatments for a lot of people as we continue to see cases rise and hospitals deal with that surge?
GEORGE SCANGOS: Yeah, thanks. So first of all, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Look, the tension recently has certainly been on vaccines, and I think with 95% effective vaccines, that's appropriate. I think we all be grateful that the vaccines work as well as they do. A couple of things to be said, though, that in order for the vaccines to eliminate the infection, we're gonna have to get to herd immunity, which probably means 75% of the people are immune in some way, which probably means vaccinating 80% of the population. I think that will be extremely hard to achieve given the reluctance of a reasonable fraction of the US population to take the vaccine.
The second issue we have to think about is the emergence of all the strains. And I'm sure you've heard about the South African strain, the UK strain