Can tweak and ship COVID vaccine in 100 days if required for Omicron: BioNTech

An updated version of the BioNTech vaccine can be produced and shipped within 100 days if the new COVID variant detected in south Africa – named Omicron by the WHO – is found to evade existing immunity, the German biotechnology company has said.

The company is already investigating whether the vaccine it developed with US drugmaker Pfizer works well against the variant which has caused concern due to its high number of mutations and initial suggestions that it could be transmitting more quickly, a report in The Guardian said, adding that BioNTech will know in two weeks whether its current vaccine is likely to be sufficiently effective against the B.1.1.529 variant based on lab experiments.

“Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant,” the company reportedly said in a statement.

Concerns about a decline in vaccine protection are theoretical based on the very high number of mutations – double that seen in Delta – on the new variant’s spike protein that the vaccine targets.

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Vaccines based on mRNA, such as the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, are thought to be the easiest to alter. But most companies have been preparing for the eventuality of a so-called escape variant and have ambitious timeframes for distributing an updated vaccine, if deemed medically necessary and commercially feasible, The Guardian reported.

Moderna too has said it is testing three existing vaccine booster candidates against the Omicron variant, and that it would develop a new variant-specific booster against it.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are also testing the effectiveness of their vaccines against the new variant.