American pharmaceutical companies are analyzing the effectiveness of their vaccines against the new Omicron variant

Various pharmaceutical companies have announced that they are analyzing the Omicron variant of COVID-19 to determine if they need to modify their vaccines to deal with the new strain discovered a few days ago in South Africa.

San Francisco, United States, November 26 (EFE). – the main vaccine manufacturers against COVID-19 In the West, including Americans Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, reported Friday that they are already testing the effectiveness of their products against the new alternative discovered in Africa austral.

Pfizer and its German partner Biotechnology They released a statement explaining that their laboratories are already analyzing this variable to determine if their vaccine (one of the most widely used in the US and European countries) might need some kind of “adjustment”.

For its part, Moderna warned that mutations observed in alternative “disturbing” He explained that he will test several doses of his vaccine to see the reaction.

Johnson & Johnson that markets its products Serum In Europe under the name of its Janssen subsidiary, it indicated that it was already testing the effectiveness of its product “against the new rapidly spreading variant identified in South Africa.”

Also American Novavax And the British AstraZeneca They said they were analyzing the effect of their vaccinations against this new variable.

In parallel, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Friday considered this “too early” to predict whether it would be necessary to adapt COVID-19 vaccines “with a different configuration” to counteract the new alternative, information about which is still “insufficient”.

“If a new mutated variant is shown to evade immunity and spread rapidly in places where the delta variant predominates (now), it would be appropriate to start activities related to the modernization of vaccines,” the European Agency admitted.

revealing of alternative in South Africa It worries the scientific community because it presents a mixture of more than 30 mutations, although some of them have already been observed in other variants, such as beta, this is the first time they have been seen together.

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Concerns prompted several countries around the world, including the European Union, to close air traffic from South African countries, especially South Africa and Botswana.

The United States, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Canada, Austria and Israel are some of the countries that have temporarily suspended travel or announced that they will impose restrictions.

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