The European Medicines Agency (EMA) could authorize suitable vaccines against the novel Omicron variant of the coronavirus in three to four months if they were to be needed, its director, Emer Cooke said on Tuesday.

The decision whether further injections would be necessary, however, would have to be taken by other bodies, she said, before a committee of the European Parliament.

"If it was necessary to change the existing vaccines, we might be able to have them approved within three to four months", from the moment when the manufacturers "start to modify" their serums, specifies the director of the regulator. European.

Laboratories pessimistic about the effectiveness of current vaccines against Omicron

The boss of the pharmaceutical company Moderna recently displayed his pessimism about the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

On Monday, the Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (J & J) laboratories reported having, like Moderna, started working on a new version of their anti-Covid vaccine more specifically targeting Omicron in case the current vaccines are not. sufficiently effective against the new variant.

European regulators "do not yet know" whether current vaccines remain effective against the Omicron variant. It will take about two weeks to determine if new vaccines are needed, said Emer Cooke. "We must first decide whether this is necessary, and it is not for the European Medicines Agency to decide," she stressed.

"This is a decision that will take into account the epidemiological situation, the effectiveness of current vaccines against the variant, the circulation of the variant in Europe and many other factors," said Emer Cooke.

The EMA has so far approved four vaccines for adults in the European Union: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

A decision on a fifth vaccine, from the US company Novavax, is expected "within a few weeks," said Emer Cooke.

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  • Omicron variant

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