This text is taken from our newsletter “Le Courrier du coronavirus” of June 13, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Pharmaceutical company Moderna boasted last week that its second-generation COVID-19 vaccine showed “superior” efficacy to Omicron. This new formula adapted to this variant, scheduled for marketing in the fall, leaves the experts consulted by The duty.
“We anticipate longer-lasting protection against variants of concern from [du vaccin de deuxième génération]which makes him our main candidate for a recall in the fall of 2022, “said Stéphane Bancel, the company’s chief executive, in a statement to investors last Wednesday.
This press release discloses little scientific data. He specifies that this new version of the vaccine induces “significantly higher levels of antibodies” against the different variants. Side effects resemble those of Moderna’s first-generation vaccine. It is a so-called “bivalent” vaccine, a kind of “2 in 1”, which targets both the original Wuhan strain and the Omicron BA.1 strain.
“As long as the data is not published in its entirety […], we cannot really comment on the effectiveness of this new vaccine,” said Dr. Cécile Tremblay, immunologist and infectiologist at the CHUM. But if the data is conclusive, this vaccine could indeed help to mitigate the dangers of the foreseeable fall surge, she believes.
Provided that it is still Omicron circulating in Quebec in a few months. Last year at this time, it was Delta that contaminated the population, and no one knew then who would be the enemy of winter 2021-2022.
This new vaccine is no more miraculous than the previous ones, points out Alain Lamarre, expert in virology at the National Institute for Scientific Research. “It may be that this vaccine protects well against a severe form [de la maladie], but we should start having a vaccine that will control transmission. This is what is lacking right now. »
This new candidate is nonetheless promising in terms of its ability to neutralize not only Omicron, but also the other variants already known. “We would not want a vaccine that protects well against Omicron, but less well against older versions of the virus, because we would expose ourselves to an immune hole space, where we could be infected by other variants which are still among the population. »
The two experts agree that it is “realistic” to hope to obtain a dose of this vaccine in the fall.