It's a new race against time.
The American company Moderna announced on Wednesday that it had started clinical trials for a booster dose of a vaccine designed specifically against the Omicron variant.
These trials will involve a total of 600 adults, half of whom have already received two doses of Moderna's vaccine at least six months ago, while the other half have received not only these two initial doses but also the booster dose already authorized.
The specific booster against Omicron will therefore be evaluated both as a third or fourth dose.
This announcement comes after the Pfizer-BioNTech alliance also announced that it is starting recruitment for a clinical trial which aims to test, on adults aged 55 and under, the safety and immune response of their vaccine against Covid-19. which specifically targets the Omicron variant, the two companies announced on Tuesday.
The boss of the American laboratory Pfizer, Albert Bourla, had declared in early January that the pharmaceutical giant could be ready to request authorizations for the new vaccine, which targets this variant of Covid-19, as early as March.
"Help deal with Omicron and other variants in the future"
While current data indicates that booster doses of the original vaccine protect against severe forms of Omicron, the company prefers to err on the side of caution, Pfizer head of vaccines Kathrin Jansen said in the statement.
"We recognize the importance of being prepared in the event that this protection wanes over time, and to help address Omicron and other variants in the future," she said on Tuesday.
For the CEO of the German company BioNTech Ugur Sahin, the protection of the initial vaccine against mild or moderate forms of Covid-19 seems to disappear more quickly against Omicron.
“This study takes place within the framework of our scientific approach which aims to develop vaccines targeted against the variants which manage to develop similar levels of protection against Omicron, as for the variants which appeared earlier, but with a longer duration of protection. protection,” he explained.
The clinical trial involves 1,420 people between the ages of 18 and 55.