EMA authorizes Omicron vaccines
This Tuesday, the goal was to be able to launch recall campaigns and target people who had not yet been vaccinated.
A child leaves with his father after receiving a dose of vaccine during the first open day for vaccination against Covid-19 for children aged 5, this Saturday January 8, 2022 at the La Chaux-de-Fonds vaccination center .
KEYSTONE/Valentin Flauraud
The European Medicines Surveillance Agency said on Tuesday that two Covid vaccines targeting subvariants of Omicron can now be used for first injections, not just boosters.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) had in September and October respectively approved the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines against types BA.4 and BA.5, but only in people who had already received their first dose.
The regulator sitting in Amsterdam stressed that its emergency working group had decided that the two vaccines could now “be used for primary vaccination”.
These vaccines are currently authorized only as boosters and can be used for adults and children.
The decision was made after reviewing laboratory studies of the immune response of so-called “bivalent” vaccines, which target new types of Omicron as well as the original Covid virus that emerged in China in late 2019.
The safety of the boosters was “comparable to that of the original mRNA vaccines,” she added.
Fever and fatigue
European nations had been keen to quickly adopt the new generation of vaccines so they could launch booster campaigns and target people who had not yet been vaccinated.
While previous “concerning variants” like Alpha and Delta eventually died out, Omicron and its sub-lines have dominated throughout 2022.
In particular, types BA.4 and BA.5 have contributed to an increase in the number of new cases of the disease in Europe and the United States in recent months.
All Omicron variants tend to result in slower disease progression as they settle less in the lungs and more in the upper airways, causing symptoms such as fever, fatigue and loss of energy. ‘smell.
ATS
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