Moderna’s chief medical officer Dr. Paul Burton said a new vaccine for the Omicron COVID-19 variant could be ready by early 2022 if it is needed.
“If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that’s going to be early 2022 before that’s really going to be available in large quantities,” Dr. Burton said on BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.
Regarding a question about the new variant Omicron, Dr. Burton said on BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show: “I would say there are three very important questions. The first is, is it more transmissible? The second is just how severe will the disease be that it can cause? And the third is, will we be able to neutralize it and control it and contain it with the current vaccines? I think the answer to that third question we should know in a couple of weeks from laboratory experiments but is it more transmissible and is it more severe, that’s going to take a little longer for us to work out.
“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks, but the remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, Moderna platform is that we can move very fast,” Dr. Burton said.
Dr. Burton said Moderna should know whether the current COVID-19 vaccine can provide protection against Omicron in the “next couple weeks,” but said it is his suspicion that Omicron may escape that protection given the 30 mutations of the variant — nine of which are known to be “associated with immune escape.”
Officials have warned that many of these mutations could lead to increased antibody resistance and transmissibility, which could limit the effectiveness of existing Covid vaccines.
The World Health Organization has named Omicron as a “variant of concern”, meaning it is potentially more contagious than other variants. The new Omicron variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24 November 2021. It is not yet known if it causes more or less severe COVID-19.
Dr. Burton said Moderna has mobilized hundreds of workers starting early Thursday morning, on Thanksgiving, to start studying the new variant.
“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks, but the remarkable thing about the MRA vaccines, Moderna platform is that we can move very fast,” Dr. Burton said.
Current vaccines could provide some protection, depending on how long ago a person was injected, Burton said. Still, he said unvaccinated people should get vaccinated or receive their booster shots, if eligible.
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