People line up outside a free COVID-19 vaccination site that opened Friday in Washington, D.C. The local health department is stepping up vaccinations and booster shots as more and more cases of the omicron variant are detected. currently in the US.
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Image by Samuel Corum / Getty
People line up outside a free COVID-19 vaccination site that opened Friday in Washington, D.C. The local health department is stepping up vaccinations and booster shots as more and more cases of the omicron variant are detected. currently in the US.
Image by Samuel Corum / Getty
Moncef Slaoui, former head of the Trump administration’s Campaign Speed Campaign, says he is “cautiously optimistic” that existing vaccines will fight omicron, the latest coronavirus variant under scrutiny. how mind.
Omicron has more mutations than its predecessors, with about 30 mutations on its mutant protein alone.
That’s worrying for virologists, who note that the spike is what vaccines use to “teach” our bodies to recognize the coronavirus.
But Slaoui, who spent decades developing vaccines in the pharmaceutical industry before leading the scientific work of Operation Warp Speed, said even the antibodies triggered by the vaccine are less effective, says Slaoui. for omicrons, other parts of the immune response can still be helpful.
“It’s a race between how quickly the virus replicates and how quickly the immune response prepares to eliminate it,” he said.
Cellular response to omicrons may be key
Vaccines strengthen the immune system and give it memory. “Then our ability to induce a rapid immune response, I believe, will always be there to clear the virus. … Maybe we’ll get sick for a day or two. Maybe we did [a] cough. Maybe we have a bit of a fever. But we won’t get very sick. “
Slaoui says vaccines don’t just promote the creation of antibodies. They also build cellular responses, including B cells and T cells. He says that T cells in particular should be able to recognize and respond to parts of the omicron variant, called the epitop, right away. even when the mutant protein is different.
“There is still a lot of potential T-cell epithelium that spans the entire protein chain,” he said. And so that’s what makes me more cautiously optimistic.” “But obviously, we need to wait for the data.”
The public health community has only known about omicrons for a few weeks, but already Pfizer and Moderna is starting to act to study potential omicron snapshots – just in case they’re needed.
Bourla said to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the company may have an omicron-specific vaccine by March.
The increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations should be a warning
When will it become clear whether a new vaccine is needed?
Slaoui recalls talking to colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases about how to respond to the new variants. “It is very important to have pre-established criteria for what causes the fact that we are starting to vaccinate people again,” he said.
For him, that is if the hospitalization rate in people vaccinated with a new variant is significantly higher than with the previous variant. Because in the end, vaccines are intended to reduce severe illness, rather than prevent every case of COVID-19.
Norman Baylor, former director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Vaccine Evaluation and Research, agrees that it remains unclear whether omicrons are too much for current vaccines. But if an omicron enhancer is needed, the FDA’s handling of the booster provides clues as to how it will process an omicron-specific footage.
“They asked for some clinical data – … immunogenicity data or antibody response data in people who had received other vaccines,” Baylor said. currently the president and chief executive officer of Biologics Consulting.
Since this is a new variant, the agency may request a little more data around this time. “And that’s what needs to be determined,” Baylor said. “What more information do we need to be comfortable?”
However, it won’t take long if Operation Warp Speed and its affiliates work on an initial COVID-19 vaccine.
This is where the mRNA technology is used by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. With mRNA vaccines, it is easier to switch to a new variant than with other vaccines. “The beauty of this technology is that it is so versatile,” says Slaoui.
