According to Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, the Omicron Mutation is unlikely to make our current vaccines useless.
Moderna has already announced a three-point strategy to combat the new variant, but health experts have said it will likely be weeks before the world has good data about how omicron may reduce the effectiveness of current vaccines. Moderna's strategy involves three options for boosting COVID-19 vaccine. A higher dose booster, shots currently being studied that are designed to "anticipate mutations such as those that have emerged in the Omicron variant" and an omicron-specific booster are already in the works, according to a Friday release from the company.
Andy Slavitt, who was a senior adviser to the White House for COVID, said in a statement that Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have estimated a vaccine to combat a new variant could be developed in about 3 months. New vaccines could be available by summer in much of the world if we start in December.
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Pfizer-BioNTech is studying the new variant and expects data within weeks, according to multiple media organizations. The reports say that a vaccine could be developed in 6 weeks and shipped in 100 days.
According to CNBC, Johnson & Johnson is testing a vaccine against omicron.
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