(London) The boss of pharmaceutical laboratory Moderna is pessimistic about the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, at a time when new health restrictions are multiplying around the world, as in the United Kingdom and Japan on Tuesday.
There will be a “significant drop” in the effectiveness of current vaccines against Omicron and it will take several months to develop a new one, judge Stéphane Bancel, leader of Moderna, in an interview with the Financial Times. “All the scientists I spoke to […] say “This is not going to do it”, ”he assures us.
Various manufacturers, including Moderna, AstraZeneca, Pfizer / BioNTech and Novavax have nevertheless expressed confidence in their ability to fight Omicron by creating a new vaccine. Russia has announced that it is working on a version of its “Sputnik V” specifically targeting Omicron, in the “unlikely event” where the current serum is not sufficient.
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed at least 5,206,370 since its onset in late 2019 in China, according to an AFP count.
Global screwdriver
Originally reported in South Africa last week, this new strain has spread to all continents, from Canada to Italy, including Japan, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Uni, where six new cases were confirmed again on Monday.
This has prompted many states to suspend travel to southern Africa, institute preventive measures and, for those most supplied with vaccines, to urge their populations to be injected with a 3e dose.
In the United Kingdom, a country among the most bereaved by the pandemic (nearly 145,000 dead), wearing a mask in transport and shops became mandatory again on Tuesday. All travelers arriving there must take a PCR test and isolate themselves until the result, the antigenic tests are no longer valid.
As of this weekend, London no longer accepted non-British people from 10 African countries (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola).
Europe, which for several weeks had become the epicenter of the pandemic, seems to be the continent most affected currently by Omicron.
The Netherlands reported 14 passengers who arrived this weekend from South Africa carrying Omicron. But the variant was already in circulation in the country on November 19, almost a week before South Africa’s announcement about the variant’s existence, Dutch authorities said on Tuesday.
France reported its first case on Tuesday, on Reunion Island, and now recommends vaccination for 5-11 year olds at risk of a severe form of the disease. The European regulator had approved the vaccine for every 5-11 years a few days earlier.
In Germany, which is experiencing a real epidemic, the Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday justified and proportional the partial containment measures taken by the government since the start of the pandemic, paving the way for a further tightening of restrictions.
In Asia, Japan, three weeks after easing certain restrictions, has banned since Tuesday “all entries of foreign nationals”. The government confirmed its first case of Omicron on Tuesday in a man returning from Namibia.
Israel, where a case has been confirmed in a traveler returning from Malawi, has also prohibited, since Sunday, the entry of foreigners into its territory.
Don’t “panic”
Never has a variant of COVID-19 caused so much concern since the emergence of Delta, which is currently dominant and already highly contagious.
“There are reasons to be concerned about this new variant, but no reason to panic,” US President Joe Biden relativized Monday, warning that Omicron would appear “sooner or later” in the United States.
The country most bereaved in the world by COVID-19 (nearly 780,000 dead), which reopened to the rest of the world in early November, was closed on Monday to travelers from eight southern African countries.
For their part, the health ministers of seven of the most industrialized nations (G7) called on Monday for “urgent action” against this “highly transmissible variant”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers the “likelihood of Omicron to spread globally” “high”, acknowledging that many unknowns remain: contagiousness, effectiveness of existing vaccines, severity of symptoms.
Reassuringly, to date, no deaths associated with Omicron have been reported.
-Exponential rise
In South Africa, the majority of new infections are already linked to Omicron and the government is predicting an exponential rise.
These data suggest that the variant has a great potential for spreading and reminds us of the urgency of vaccination on a global scale, the only one capable of providing global immune coverage to control the epidemic, while Africa is very little vaccinated.
Deeming itself “punished” for revealing its existence, South Africa has called for the “immediate and urgent” lifting of travel restrictions, deeming “regrettable” that some African nations are also taking these measures.
Thus Gabon henceforth refuses on its soil travelers from eight countries of southern Africa.
The Omicron variant could weigh on the economy and inflation, warned the president of the US central bank Jerome Powell on Monday, stressing “downside risks to jobs and economic activity”.
China also acknowledged on Tuesday that Omicron would complicate the organization of the Beijing Winter Olympics (February 4-20, 2022), but reaffirmed its confidence in the success of the event.