Omicron could evade current Covid vaccines, Moderna chief warns

Chief medical officer says the pharma company could produce new drug in bulk early next year

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  Indian students apply the finishing touches to paintings created to raise awareness of the variant in Mumbai. Reuters

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  International travellers wearing personal protective equipment arrive at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport as Australia records its first cases of the Omicron variant. AFP

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  A greeting at the international terminal of Sydney Airport, as countries respond to the new variant. Reuters

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  A sign asking people to wear face coverings in a building in Manhattan as the newly discovered Omicron variant appears in countries around the world. AFP

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  Tourists wave as the ‘Europa’ passenger liner arrives in South African waters off Cape Town as the new coronavirus variant Omicron spreads in other countries. Reuters

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  Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Dutch health authorities said they have found another case of the Omicron Covid-19 variant among passengers arriving from South Africa, bringing the country’s total to 14. AFP

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  Pupils wear face masks in Beijing. Despite the global worry, scientists say it remains unclear whether the Omicron variant is more dangerous than other strains of the virus. AP

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  People wearing face masks in Manhattan. New York's governor has declared a state of emergency due to the risk of a surge of Covid-19 cases as winter sets in. AFP

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  British Health Secretary Sajid Javid meets a member of staff at a vaccine centre in Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London. Getty Images

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  A sign points the way to a Covid-19 test centre at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. AFP

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  Narita International Airport in Japan is quiet after travel was restricted to prevent the spread of Omicron. Reuters

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  A PCR test at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. AFP

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  Soekarno Hatta International airport. Indonesia has banned the arrival of travellers who have recently been in eight southern African countries. Reuters

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  Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok after Thailand banned entry from eight southern African countries due to the Omicron variant. Reuters

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  Travellers wear personal protective equipment outside the international terminal at Sydney Airport, Australia. Reuters

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  Passengers wearing protective gear at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, where health authorities have imposed an entry ban on foreign arrivals from eight African countries, including South Africa. EPA

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  Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv. The Israeli government approved a 14-day ban on foreign arrivals over concerns about Omicron. EPA

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  Travellers queuing in the hope of boarding an overbooked Lufthansa flight at Cape Town International Airport. Antonie Robertson / The National

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  Covid-stricken Czech President Milos Zeman sits in a plastic cage as he appoints Petr Fiala as Prime Minister, near Prague. AFP

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  Tourists checking in at Cape Town International Airport in South Africa. Antonie Robertson / The National

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  Several airlines have stopped flying out of South Africa amid the spread of the new variant, causing disruption at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. Reuters

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  Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Two cases of the recently discovered Omicron variant were detected in New South Wales. EPA

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  Passengers, many not wearing face coverings, on the London Underground. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said mandatory mask-wearing would return to shops and public transport in England but there are concerns over how the rule will be enforced. AFP

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  A stroll, with face masks, in Biarritz, south-western France. French Health Minister Olivier Veran said France had no confirmed cases of the Omicron variant and was not changing its strategy of increasing vaccinations and booster shots. AP

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  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty during a press conference on the variant in London. Reuters

Live updates: follow the latest news on Covid-19 variant Omicron

Omicron, the new strain of the coronavirus, may elude the current generation of Covid-19 vaccines, Moderna's chief medical officer has said.

Paul Burton said scientists should know more about the ability of vaccines to provide protection in the next couple of weeks.

"These mutations – at least 30 of them in the spike protein alone, nine of them known to be associated with immune escape, and another 11 are predicted to be associated with immune escape," Mr Burton told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.

"You bring those together [and] I think this is a very concerning virus."

He said the mRNA vaccine platform can be altered “very fast” to respond to new strains.

"If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that's going to be early 2022 before that's really going to be available in large quantities."

Pfizer-BioNTech expects lab data within two weeks on the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine against the strain and can adapt it within 60 days. The company said it can ship the first batches out within 100 days in the event of an “escape variant”.

Experts have, however, said protection against severe disease and death is expected to hold up, even if vaccines lose some efficiency against the strain.

A researcher for Moderna, who tweets under the name Chise, wrote that there was “NO plausible scenario this will take us back to square one”.

“These vaccines are polyclonal, there are non-neutralising antibodies, and T-cells. Will the vaccines take a hit? Likely, as they do with ALL variants. Will it completely render these useless? Absolutely not," she tweeted.

Omicron was designated a variant of concern on Friday by the World Health Organisation, which said preliminary evidence suggests the strain carries an increased risk of reinfection.

It has rapidly overtaken Delta to become the dominant variant in Gauteng, a province of South Africa, which accounts for the vast majority of cases in the country.

A doctor who raised the alarm about the new variant in the province said on Saturday that healthy patients were developing “unusual but mild symptoms” such as “feeling so tired", a “very high pulse rate” and fever.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” Dr Angelique Coetzee, a GP who chairs the South African Medical Association, told The Telegraph.

She said her patients were young and healthy and the new variant could still hit older people, or those with underlying health conditions harder.

Epidemiologists have urged caution in interpreting early reports.

Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, pointed out the resurgence of cases in Gauteng was very recent and from a low base, with very rapid increases in test positivity rates.

“Most of the early spread was among younger people, with outbreaks in universities likely being amplification events,” he tweeted.

“We would only expect to see the time lag for infections to progress to severe disease and impact on hospitalisations in the next few weeks.”

Doctors have warned they are already seeing an upswing in moderate to severe cases among the young, who are either not at all or only partially vaccinated.

“We’re seeing a marked change in the demographic profile of patients with Covid-19,” Rudo Mathivha, the head of the intensive care unit at Soweto’s Baragwanath Hospital, told an online press briefing.

She said people in their 20s to their late 30s were “coming in with moderate to severe disease, some needing intensive care”.

“About 65 per cent are not vaccinated and most of the rest are only half-vaccinated,” she said.