New virus variant
Moderna has been working hard on the Omikron vaccine since Thanksgiving
The US vaccine manufacturer Moderna has been working on a vaccine against the new virus variant Omikron since last week
© Frank Hoermann / Sven Simon / Picture Alliance
Due to the new virus variant Omikron, many employees of the vaccine manufacturer Moderna were called to work on Thanksgiving this year. The group wants to research vaccination protection against the dangerous mutant as soon as possible.
The vaccine manufacturer Moderna started work on a vaccine against the Omicron variant on the last Thanksgiving holiday. Hundreds of his employees started working on a corresponding adaptation of the corona vaccine after the first publications about the mutant, the medical head of the pharmaceutical company, Paul Burton, said in a BBC interview on Sunday. Thanksgiving fell on November 25th this year – last Thursday.
Moderna vaccine against the omicron mutant
It will take a few more weeks to have reliable knowledge about how much the new Corona variant eludes the effect of the current vaccines and whether a new vaccine has to be produced. If so, he reckons that this could be manufactured on a large scale in early 2022. Like the Biontech product, the Moderna vaccine is one of the mRNA vaccines whose adaptation to new variants is considered to be relatively feasible.
“It’s a seemingly dangerous virus,” said Burton. “But I think we now have a lot of tools in our arsenal to fight it, so I’m optimistic.” The omicron variant (B.1.1.529), which was first detected in southern Africa, was classified as “worrying” by the World Health Organization (WHO).
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