If the vaccines currently available always give significant protection against the serious forms of COVID-19, their effectiveness is eroding in the face of omicron and its subvariants.
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When is a COVVI-19 vaccine adapted to variants? While the epidemic recovery is accentuated all over the world, the question of the development of a new formulation specifically targeting the omicron variant and its most widespread sub-lines today, BA.4 and BA. 5, reappears in force in recent days.
Because if the world health authorities all agree that the vaccines currently available, although based solely on the original strain of the virus, continue to confer on the populations which benefit significant protection against the serious forms of the COVVI- 19, it appears just as clearly as the effectiveness of the latter crosses against Omicron and its subvariants. An observation that questions governments around the world on the vaccination strategy to be adopted to fight against the virus.
Meeting on June 28 for DébateTr, the American Medicines Agency (FDA) recommended that pharmaceutical manufacturers adapt their vaccine reminders designed against omicron to the BA.4 and BA.5, the most recent subvariants , in order to prevent the new formulations from becoming too quickly obsolete due to the rapid evolution of the virus. 2>
tests based on BA.1
For pharmaceutical laboratories, a real race for variants is engaged. Faced with the arrival of Omicron, in November 2021, Biontech and his partner, Pfizer, as well as their Moderna rival, the leaders of the COVVI-19 vaccine market, had indeed started working on stakes day of their injections incorporating this new strain. Biontech and Pfizer have launched clinical trials for two candidates-Vaccins, one targeting only omicron, and the other called “bivalent”, that is to say integrating two strains, which targets both omicron and the Original wuhan strain of SARS-COV-2. Moderna also got down to the development of a bivalent recall vaccine combining these same two strains.
But they are all based on the Ba.1 subvariant, which was the last subvariant known at the time. While the recently announced results of these Vaccini candidates show greater efficiency than vaccines currently on the market, they are however more effective against the BA.1 sub-lineage than against those of BA.4 and BA.5. Vaccine manufacturers are already working on a new adaptation of their products incorporating these two subvariants, however it will take several months, given the deadlines for regulatory approval and production, before they are available. Novavax recently indicated that its vaccine targeting BA.4 and BA.5 would only be available in the fourth quarter. The French Sanofi, who expressed, in June, convincing results against Omicron and his subvariants for his bivalent candidate targeting the beta variant, is still being evaluated by the European authorities.