As Omicron upends Covid-19 vaccine targets, what will the future look like?

Name: Omicron variant driving record-breaking Covid-19 infection rates in the US and Europe
Uploaded: 2022-01-03T04:00:14.000Z
Duration: 1 min 31 s
Description: Omicron variant driving record-breaking Covid-19 infection rates in the US and Europe

Same-shot boosters or mix-and-match regimens, variant-specific or pan-coronavirus jabs – the data still unclear on the best way to prevent severe disease and death

Given the many unknowns with Omicron, booster programmes with existing vaccines are only buying time for scientists and governments to find out more

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Josephine Ma

Published: 12:00pm, 3 Jan 2022Updated: 12:53pm, 11 Jan 2022

This is the first of a two-part series on the impact of the Omicron variant on vaccine roll-outs around the world. Here, Josephine Ma looks at some of the factors affecting what future vaccine programmes might look like.

While many countries are scrambling to roll out vaccine boosters in hopes of reducing hospitalisation when the “viral blizzards” of Omicron begin to hit, Israel has already approved fourth shots for vulnerable groups.

This comes just a year after the country rolled out its vaccination campaign with Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA jabs, and about five months after a third, booster shot roll-out.

Despite initial dissuasion by the World Health Organization (WHO) over vaccine inequity, many well-off or middle-income countries have started rolling out third shots for their populations in recent months.

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Omicron variant driving record-breaking Covid-19 infection rates in the US and Europe

This action was prompted by data showing that the effectiveness of even the best performing vaccines like the mRNA shots waned in six months and these were less effective in protecting against the heavily mutated Omicron variant, thus raising further questions about what future vaccine programmes might look like.

Flu shots are given annually to adapt to different strains. But with Covid-19, many people have already had three shots in the past year alone.