The head of the European Union’s drug regulator stated on Tuesday that vaccines tailored to the new Omicron coronavirus variant could be approved in three to four months.
The European Medicines Agency’s executive director, Emer Cooke, stated that other organisations would have to decide whether new vaccines are required.
Cooke told a European Parliament committee, “if there is a need to change the existing vaccines, we could have those approved within three to four months.”
“That’s from the beginning,” they said when they began to change.
The CEO of Moderna was quoted as saying that current vaccines will struggle against Omicron’s highly modified form.
Moderna and its American rival Pfizer are already working on omicron-targeted vaccines.
She estimated that EU authorities would need about two weeks to determine whether the current vaccines are still effective against Omicron or if new ones are required.
According to Cooke, it is not up to the European Medicines Agency to decide whether or not this is necessary.
The European Medicines Agency has currently approved four vaccines for use in the EU: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson.
