eFM News

Stephane Bancel, the CEO of American biotech firm Moderna, has warned COVID-19 could be around "forever."

Bancel told a virtual healthcare conference Wednesday that "SARS-CoV-2 is not going away."

His remarks fall in line with public health officials and infectious disease experts around the world who have said there is a high likelihood that COVID-19 will become an endemic disease.

That means it will become present in communities at all times, though likely at lower levels than it is now.

There are already four coronaviruses that are endemic across the world that usually cause common colds and are not as deadly as COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization.