Omicron Variant: The vaccine efficacy war has broken out between pharmaceutical companies Pfizer e Modern.
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The former support the efficacy of the vaccine and the third dose against the Omicron variant while Moderna (who announced two days ago that they were putting a new vaccine into production) maintain that its efficacy is very limited.
"The vaccine probably doesn't protect against infection because we've had cases, but perhaps it protects against intensive care. There are multiple levels of protection: positivity, symptoms, hospitalization, resuscitation. But the situation is constantly evolving, very difficult to predict. I see many colleagues making more or less reassuring statements but they are just speculations.
No one knows exactly what will happen. One thing can be said, however: when the Delta variant was discovered, many people rushed to get vaccinated and they did well. Because the more people get vaccinated, the less chance the virus has to evolve and mutate. And therefore to continue to spread”.
The senior vice president of La Stampa told this to Pfizer-Biontech Katalin Kariko, the scientist who created the messenger RNA for coronavirus vaccines, adding that to understand if the serum will be useful against the Omicron variant, "We need a very large amount of data, which we don't have right now. We will have it in the next few weeks, even in a relatively short time."
Omicron variant, Pfizer: "with the vaccine the protection is high"
"We don't know, for example - explains the scientist also speaking with Corriere della Sera - how many of the infected in South Africa were vaccinated, how many of them got sick, how seriously. If you have 1 or 2 cases, it's of little use: you need high numbers. The truth is that for now we don't know. Everyone is looking at the growing numbers of infections.
But we also know how many different variants have already appeared so far: another South African, a Japanese, an English, an Indian, a Latin American, there was one in California. Simply, the virus is constantly evolving. But this does not mean that a new vaccine is needed for each variant. Maybe we can find that the effectiveness against the infection has decreased, but the protection against the disease is still very high”.
As for the EMA's approval of the vaccine for children between 5 and 11 years old, the scientist, speaking to La Stampa, specifies that "for a child the amount of vaccine is reduced compared to that of an adult, it is only 10 micrograms. Then the action of the mRNA must be evaluated because the vaccine represents only a small part of it, while the virus is a much larger piece. For this reason, one dose is certainly needed for children, I believe that two will be needed in the end.
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I believe based on my experience – continues – that people really want to know how the vaccine works. The levels of concern are different: there are those who ask how it is produced, how it is used, others want to know what happens five years after inoculation. I answer all these people, with scientific reasons, but basically they do not know what a molecular biologist does. They do not have enough knowledge to know if I am right or wrong. And for this reason, they will continue to believe their belief. It is a battle that we will never win”.
Omicron Variant. Moderna CEO: “Current Vaccines Much Less Effective”
Existing Covid vaccines may be much less effective against the Omicron variant. This is the warning raised by the CEO of IT world;, Stephane Bancek, in an interview with the Financial Times. Bancek said the high number of mutations in the new strain of the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells, and the rapid spread of the variant suggest that current vaccines will need to be modified next year. “I think there will be a material decline. I don’t know how much, because we have to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to….they say, ‘this is not good,’” he said.
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Article published on November 30, 2021 - 08:54
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