London, Thanasis Gavos
The American pharmaceutical company Moderna is expected to start testing for a new vaccine that will be designed to target the Omicron variant at the beginning of the new year, the chief medical advisor of the company, Dr. Paul Burton, told the British Sky News this morning.
He estimated that after “very intense activity in the first quarter of the year”, the first results should probably be expected at the beginning of the second quarter of 2022.
Dr Burton said immunity and protection from the two doses of the Moderna and other companies’ vaccine against Omicron were declining as much as 40 times over three to six months. He stressed, however, that with the boosting dose, immunity increases again to a high degree. “We can be optimistic that the booster dose may protect against the Omicron variant,” said the US pharmacologist, whose vaccine is being administered as a third dose in the UK, along with that of Pfizer.
He noted that the antibodies in the body after the booster dose “increase rapidly”.
He described Omicron as a “serious variant”, citing evidence from South Africa that he had the ability to infect infected people.
He also cited data from Denmark, according to which the hospitalization rates due to Omicron are similar to those for Delta.
Dr. Burton had expressed concern before a British parliamentary committee on Tuesday that a new dangerous variant could emerge if someone were infected with the Omicron and Delta variants, which are also in general circulation at the same time.
As he mentioned, there is a possibility that the two variants will share genetic material creating a new strain, which would be a cause for further concern.
In an interview with Sky News, he commented that the simultaneous dispersion of the two variants poses a significant threat.
Commenting on this warning, British scientists pointed out that there have already been three cases of combining two variants of the coronavirus due to simultaneous infection of one person and the emergence of a new third variant.
Two of these cases were detected in Spain and California in late January and early February respectively, but in all cases the new variant disappeared after a few dozen cases.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
.
