The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Wednesday approved an adapted version of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid vaccine to counter infection with a widespread subvariant of the virus as winter approaches.
Although since the beginning of May the World Health Organization no longer considers Covid-19 a global health emergency, the virus continues to circulate in all countries and new strains continue to emerge.
The EMA announced in a press release that it had “recommended to authorize a tailored (…) vaccine targeting the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant.”
The European regulator had recommended in June that vaccines be updated to attack the XBB strain of the virus that has become dominant in Europe and other parts of the world.
“Helping to maintain optimal protection”
The new approved messenger RNA vaccine, called Comirnaty Omicron XBB.1.5, is intended to prevent Covid-19 in adults and children from six months of age.
“Since Omicron XBB.1.5 is closely related to other variants currently in circulation, the vaccine should help maintain optimal protection against (…) these other variants,” according to the EMA.
Adults and children over five years of age need a single injection “regardless of their vaccination history against Covid-19”, while younger children may receive “one or three doses depending on whether they have followed a primary vaccination cycle or They have had the vaccine against Covid-19”. 19”, specified the Amsterdam-based organization.
Side effects are generally mild and short-lived, according to the regulator, although it clarified that “more serious side effects may occur in rare cases.”
A first authorization of the vaccine 3 years ago
Comirnaty was first authorized in the EU in September 2020. Adaptive versions targeting other sub-variants of Covid-19 received the green light from the European health authorities in September 2022.
Conventional vaccines seek to accustom the body to a virus, introducing it directly into the body, in an attenuated or inactivated form. Those of messenger RNA, which appeared with the Covid-19 crisis, work differently.
They focus on a small part of the virus (in the case of SARS-CoV-2, the so-called “Spike” protein) and aim to inject the body with strands of genetic instructions, called messenger RNA, that tell the body to make this protein.
Harmless in itself, this “spike” of the coronavirus is then detected by the immune system, which will produce antibodies. Other pharmaceutical groups are preparing vaccines targeting the XBB line.
Source: BFM TV
