The United Kingdom was the first in the world to approve a bivalent vaccine against coronavirus, as well as against the “omicron” strain of the American company Moderna. This is stated in a statement by the British Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on the website of the British government.
Delivery of the first doses of the vaccine is planned within the next two weeks.
Half of the dose of the bivalent vaccine is aimed at the original strain of coronavirus, the second half is directed at Omicron. The head of the Medicines Commission, Munir Pirmohamed, said the company's new vaccine is capable of inducing a broader immune response than the original.
The vaccine is planned to be used as a booster dose for adults. The side effects in the trials were the same as the previous Moderna coronavirus vaccine. The MHRA claims they do not require medical attention. Moderna has also applied for registration in the European Union, Australia and Canada.
Molecular biologist and science journalist Irina Yakutenko previously told The Insider that the omicron has changed a lot compared to its predecessors, and antibodies developed after vaccination are no longer able to prevent it from entering cells. Both those who have been vaccinated and those who have been ill can become infected again. The biologist called the solution to the problem of changing vaccines so that they stimulate the production of antibodies that recognize new varieties of SARS-CoV-2. She noted that mRNA vaccine manufacturers Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna , as well as the creators of the Russian Sputnik, have developed new versions of vaccines modified to look like Omicron.