BioNTech and Moderna Give Updates on COVID-19 Vaccines Targeting Omicron Variant

BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin in Berlin, Germany, on Aug. 27, 2021. Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine designed to target the Omicron virus variant could be ready for administration as soon as April while Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine booster designed to neutralize the variant may be ready by August.

Trial data on Pfizer-BioNTech jab is on track to be ready for dissemination to regulatory agencies by the end of March but regulators will likely not clear it that month, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told Germany’s Bild newspaper on Feb. 17.

The trial started in January.

“It depends on the regulatory permission,” Sahin said, adding that the company is in talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Union regulators.

Clearance could take until the end of May, Sahin said.

Moderna’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, meanwhile, told Reuters that the company’s booster shot targeting Omicron could be ready by August. A trial for the booster also started in January.

Omicron is a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that causes COVID-19. Omicron emerged in Africa in late 2021 and displaced Delta as the dominant virus strain in many countries soon after, including the United States. Omicron better evades protection from vaccination and prior infection when compared to Delta. Omicron also causes less severe disease but due to a sharp rise in the number of infections, hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19 grew after it appeared. However, cases and hospitalizations have since plunged in most countries, and some experts have questioned whether an Omicron-specific vaccine is necessary.

Researchers in the United States analyzed Moderna’s Omicron-specific booster in monkeys and found comparable protection with its original booster.

The new study “indicates that we are not likely to need an Omicron-specific booster vaccine, as that version performs no better than the standard one,” Dr. John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College who was not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“The ongoing human trials will need to confirm these animal experiments, but I think that’s likely to happen,” he added.

Bancel said that Moderna executives still believe a booster will be needed.

“I don’t know yet if it is going to be the existing vaccine, Omicron-only, or bivalent: Omicron and existing vaccine, two mRNA in one dose,” he said.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer shots are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Results for early testing on Pfizer’s shot have not yet been made public.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in January acknowledged the Omicron-targeted jab may not be needed but said the company and its partner would keep testing it.

Sahin said Thursday that the fall in COVID-19 metrics doesn’t mean a fresh wave can’t hit the world and said his company was prepared to develop vaccines for any new variants that emerge, if deemed necessary.

At the same time, he said he does not see “the situation as dramatic anymore.”