Francis Collins, the director of the National Institute of Health, said in an interview that it was too soon to tell if the Omicron variant of the coronaviruses has a negative effect on vaccine effectiveness.
Collins said that the variant has a lot of changes, like 50 of them, and more than 30 of those in the spike protein, which is the part off the virus that attaches to your human cells if you get infections.
He said that it was a new record for the number of mutations. It makes you worry that it might not respond to the vaccine, because it is a sufficiently different virus. We don't know that.
The Omicron variant of the coronaviruses was first identified by genetic analysis in South Africa, but has since been found in many countries. Public-health experts say it's likely to be identified soon.
Public-health experts have stressed that it's too early to know what impact the new variant will have on efforts to combat the Pandemic.
Collins said it would take around two to three weeks to determine if the existing COVID-19 vaccines would be effective in protecting against the Omicron variant. Moderna and Pfizer said they will modify existing vaccines if the new variant requires them to.
Collins on Sunday encouraged people to get the existing vaccines and booster shoots, which recently became available to all previously vaccine-vaccinated adults in the US.
The vaccines and the boosters have provided strong protection against things like Delta in all the previous examples.
The current vaccines are likely to be sufficient to provide protection and the boosters will give that additional layer of protection, he said.
