Pfizer begins human trials for new Omicron vaccine, but will it be needed?

Pfizer begins human trials for new Omicron vaccine, but will it be needed?

VACCINE developers Pfizer and BioNTech have been working on a new vax to battle the Omicron Covid variant and have begun human trials, but will this specific vaccine be needed?
The two firms announced on Tuesday, January 25 that they had begun enrolling adults ages 18 to 55 for trials taking place in the US and South Africa. According to the WSJ, the trials seek to examine the safety, tolerability and, most importantly, the immune response generated by the new vaccines. At least one human subject has already received a shot of the new vaccine, Pfizer said Tuesday.
The new trials will be performed on three groups of volunteers consisting of up to 615 people, including some of the subjects from the study that led to the current vaccine’s clearance in 2020. The people who are enrolled must have received the two-dose primary series of the current vaccine 3-6 months prior to signing up.
Once enrolled, they will receive either one dose of the omicron-focused vaccine, two doses four weeks apart from each other, or a third dose. Additionally, researchers will also recruit up to 600 people who received three doses of the current vaccine 3-6 months ago. These subjects will receive either one dose of the omicron jab, or a fourth dose of the current shot.
However, many people have questioned whether a new Omicron specific vaccine is needed due to several admissions from health experts from across the world that this current strain, although highly transmittable, is not as deadly as previous variants.
In fact, three major studies carried out in Scotland, England and South Africa confirmed that the Omicron variant was milder than Delta. According to the studies, people infected with the Omicron variant are less likely to become severely ill.
Neil Ferguson, also known by the nickname ‘Professor Lockdown’, discovered that one study showed a “moderate reduction in the risk of hospitalisation associated with the Omicron variant”.
Also, as many people have pointed out, the life expectancy of this strain is likely to have run its course before the vaccines released date in March, with countries such as South Africa experiencing a substantially lower number of cases. While US health authorities have stated that boosters targeting omicron might not be needed since it’s unclear whether future dominant variants will be descents of Omicron or other strains.
But Dr Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the US President, still believes it’s “entirely conceivable” that a fourth booster will be needed and warned that it would be “prudent” to prepare for the likelihood that Omicron will persist at pandemic levels for some time.
The 81-year-old, who is seen by many as the “face of the pandemic”, even stressed that an Omicron-focused vaccine would help humanity prepare for the eventuality that the Omicron-driven wave persists.

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