Two pharmaceutical companies have begun taking immediate steps to develop a vaccine that could potentially stop the new emerging Omicron variant in its tracks.
Moderna on Friday announced the development of booster shots against COVID-19 variant Omicron.
The company said it is also working on a higher dose of its existing vaccine to deal with the new threat.
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Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said that the mutations in the Omicron variant are “concerning and for several days, we have been moving as fast as possible to execute our strategy to address this variant.”
The studies on two booster candidates to fight off mutations similar to the Omicron variant are already underway.
Meanwhile, BioNTech – the co-creator of Pfizer’s widely-accepted vaccine, said that it needs 100 days to develop and tweak its current vaccines if Omicron is proven to thwart and compromise immunity for those who have taken the Pfizer jab.
At present, Pfizer-BioNTech is already investigating if its vaccine shots are effective against the said variant.
The Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa this week.
Earlier the WHO named the new virus as ‘highly transmissible’ (AW)
