DAILY NEWS Will COVID-19 vaccines stand against Omicron? - Kimberlie Anne S. Austria
Multiple mutations of the Omicron variant, a new covid19 variant of concern, might make vaccines less effective. "[Omicron] has a lot of mutations in what we call the spike protein... It's the part of the virus on the outside that's critical both for the virus to actually attach to cells and infect them, but it's also the part that our immune system learns to recognize when we've been infected or vaccinated so that if it sees it against it mounts a good immune response,” explained Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist. Scientists' primary concern is the possibility that Omicron will be able to get into cells faster because of its multiple mutations, or it may have mutated so much that the body's immune system doesn't recognize it. Data analyzed about the new variant suggests that immune protection and the protection from vaccines might be lessened for Omicron due to its multiple mutations. "One the things that surprise scientists about omicron is that it's actually very distantly related from any other variant we've seen so far," Hodcroft added. Scientists are now working to
Page 2
understand the variant better to know how protected people are and whether it is more transmissible compared to the previous variants like Delta. She added that scientists believe Omicron became distinct when it appeared in an immunocompromised individual, conditioning the virus to mutate aggressively. Hodcroft emphasized that even if Omicron seems to have a less bad clinical result and fewer people end up in the hospital, the number of infected individuals will increase if it transmits faster and can foil vaccination protection. If more individuals need hospital admission, healthcare systems will be overwhelmed. Derrick Williams, a Deutsche Welle (DW) Science correspondent, stated that companies that make COVID-19
THE EQUILIBRIUM
vaccines plan to respond to Omicron with tweaks in their products if proven that this variant can really affect immune defenses programmed by vaccines. Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna are ready to produce a massive scale of vaccines tailored for Omicron by March this year. South African scientists revealed this variant in late December 2021 by studying the composition of the virus by sequencing its genes - a tool that allows scientists to follow how a virus mutates.
WWW.THEEQUILIBRIUM.ORG
