Omicron Covid-19 variant: Pfizer, BioNTech unsure about vaccine efficacy against new coronavirus strain

A new, more lethal strain of the novel coronavirus has yet again rung the alarm bells globally after the World Health Organization identified ‘B.1.1.529’ as a ‘variant of concern’ on Friday.

The protein of this new variant named ‘Omicron’ (Greek) is believed to be ineffective against the Covid-19 vaccines that are currently available in the global market.

Now, leading pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech have issued a statement saying that even they are unsure whether their jabs would help treat this new mutated strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus.

However, the companies have assured to develop a new, more effective vaccine against this variant “within 100 days”, Sputnik reported.

“In the event that vaccine-escape variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days, subject to regulatory approval,” they said in the statement on Saturday.

The World Health Organization confirmed the identification of the new ‘B.1.1.529’ strain, initially detected in southern Africa.

Pfizer and BioNTech noted that the new variant “significantly differs from previously observed ones”, and have said that they seek to attain more data on ‘Omicron’ over the next couple of weeks.

The pharma majors stressed that they had already started months ago working on making their jabs adaptable to emerging variants, adding that the vaccine currently is able to adjust within six weeks of administration.

Meanwhile, India increased its scrutiny level yesterday amid the new threat, and included several countries to the existing list from where passengers would have to follow additional measures upon arrival, including post-arrival testing.

The countries are South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, countries in Europe including the United Kingdom.