Pfizer Says Omicron Vaccine to be Ready by March

Pfizer aims to have a COVID-19 vaccine that explicitly targets omicron and other circulating variants by March. The company’s spokesman said that they had begun work on a DNA template tailored to the sequence of Omicron, a critical step in the process of advancing a variant version of our vaccine if we find one is needed.

They are also manufacturing the variant vaccine at risk, as we did for Beta and Delta before. The announcement comes after the pharmaceutical giant previously said it would be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against the omicron variant in roughly 100 days, subject to regulatory approval if the third dose of its current BNT162b2 vaccine is not found to protect against the Omicron variant or other future variants.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla first announced the March timeline during an interview with CNBC on Monday.Earlier this month, Pfizer and BioNTech received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to expand the emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine booster doses to individuals 12 years of age and older.The FDA reduced the time between administration of a second dose and booster dose from at least six months to at least five months.

The agency noted that there is no need to introduce a double booster dose to the most vulnerable populations as of this time, adding that potential market and timing will be reviewed as data evolves.The Center for Disease Control and Prevention added that 74.5 million fully vaccinated Americans have received a COVID-19 booster dose. As of Dec. 29, Pfizer and BioNTech delivered 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low- and middle-income countries. The companies expect to provide an additional 1 billion amounts to these nations in 2022.