The European Medicines Agency approves Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against Omicron

The European Medicines Agency today approved the first Omicron-adapted Covid-19 vaccines from drugmakers Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna to start a booster dose campaign this winter to ward off a possible new wave.

The vaccines “target Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant plus the original strain” of the coronavirus, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019, the Amsterdam-based EMA said.

The new vaccines are intended to be given to people aged 12 and over who have already been vaccinated at least once against Covid-19, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced. These vaccines are adapted versions of Pfizer/BioNTech’s original Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax vaccines.

They do not, however, target the virulent BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the ‘Omicron’ variant, which have emerged in recent months as the dominant strains worldwide.

The European Medicines Agency announced earlier today that it is supporting two separate updated Covid-19 vaccines to be given as booster doses targeting the ‘Omicron’ variant, as the old continent prepares to start vaccination to fight winter infections. The new so-called bivalent doses work against Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant and the original virus first detected in China.

Source: AMPE