• Covid Pfizer's vaccine against ómicron produces a "high immune response" against this variant of Covid

  • Coronavirus Identified a new variant of Covid, Ómicron BA.2.75, with more capacity to 'escape' from vaccines

The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved this Monday the first bivalent Covid-19 vaccine, effective against both the original variant of SARS-CoV-2 and against Omicron.

Specifically, it is an update of the vaccine manufactured by the American company

Moderna

, and it has been approved for booster doses in adults "after verifying that it meets safety, quality and efficacy standards," according to the regulatory body. British.

As they explain, in each dose of the booster vaccine, 'Spikevax bivalent Original/Omicron',

half of the vaccine

(25 micrograms)

targets the original strain of the virus

from 2020 and

the other half (25 micrograms ), to Omicron.

The MHRA's decision is based on data from a clinical trial that showed that a booster with the Moderna bivalent vaccine triggers "a strong immune response against both Omicron (BA.1) and the original 2020 strain," they detail.

Likewise, it was also verified that the bivalent vaccine generates a

good immune response against the subvariants of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.

As far as side effects are concerned, they have been found to be the same as those triggered by the original booster dose of Moderna and are usually mild.

In this sense, no serious security problems have been identified.

"I am pleased to announce the approval of the Moderna bivalent booster vaccine, which in the clinical trial provided a strong immune response against the Omicron BA.1 variant, as well as the original 2020 strain," said MHRA Chief Executive, Dr. June Raine.

Although he acknowledges that the first generation of vaccines against Covid-19 "continues to save lives", he assures that this bivalent vaccine provides "a

more refined tool"

in protecting against this disease "as the virus continues to evolve".

For his part, the president of the United Kingdom Commission for Medicinal Products for Human Use, Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, commented that the injection "represents the next step in the development of vaccines to combat the virus, due to its

ability to cause a broader immune response than the original vaccine.

The MHRA is ahead of the EMA

In this way, the United Kingdom has advanced its decision to the European Medicines Agency (EMA, for its acronym in English), which already announced in mid-June that it had initiated a continuous review of both the version of the bivalent vaccine of Modern like that of Pfizer and BioNTech, which had also shown promising results.

In fact, last week,

Pfizer and BioNTech

reported that

their vaccine

adapted to the BA.1 and BA.4/5 variants will not arrive

until October 2022

, "in time for the fall booster vaccination campaigns."

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  • Coronavirus

  • United Kingdom

  • Omicron variant

  • Vaccines

  • covid 19