Alpha, Delta, Omicron… Variants of the coronavirus have followed one another in recent months. But it is not finished ! Because, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), new variants of Covid-19 could appear this winter. However, the organization specifies that existing vaccines should continue to protect populations against severe forms of the disease.
The European regulator was holding a regular press conference on the Covid-19 situation as the European Union prepares to launch a recall campaign ahead of a feared wave of new cases by the end of the year. The booster campaign will be with suitable vaccines – approved by the EMA on Thursday – targeting the now-dominant Omicron variant, and the original vaccines developed to fight the first strain of the virus that first appeared in China in 2019, said EMA, based in Amsterdam.
Vaccines targeting Omicron variants
But people “shouldn’t wait for a specific vaccine,” said EMA’s head of vaccine strategy Marco Cavaleri. “There could be a whole new variant emerging that we are not able to predict today,” he added.
The EMA on Thursday approved adapted vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna targeting the Omicron BA.1 subvariant in addition to the original strain. A new Pfizer vaccine targeting the contagious BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the Omicron variant, which have emerged in recent months as the dominant strains in the world, should be authorized in mid-September. A similar vaccine from Moderna is also in the works.
Variants of Omicron
These vaccines adapted to Omicron will largely be reserved for vulnerable people such as the elderly, pregnant women and workers in the health sector, underlined Marco Cavaleri.
Most people will receive the original vaccines, “still capable of protecting against the severe form of Covid-19 and death”, even if they are less effective in preventing contamination, he explained. Furthermore, it is “not excluded” that new variants will emerge this winter, closer to the previous sub-variants of Omicron, currently largely overtaken by the BA.4 and 5 lineages.