A booster of Moderna’s vaccine offers enough protection against the quickly spreading omicron variant to guard recipients against COVID-19 for some months ahead, the drugmaker said Monday.
New clinical trial data showed that a 50 microgram booster of the federally authorized mRNA-1273 vaccine increased antibody levels by 37 times against omicron, while a double boost at 100 micrograms increased protection against the variant 83-fold, the company reported.
“The dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases from the Omicron variant is concerning to all. However, these data … are reassuring,” CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement.
The drug should “protect people through the coming holiday period and through these winter months, when we’re going to see the most severe pressure of omicron,” Paul Burton, M.D., Moderna’s chief medical officer, told Reuters.
Both the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines have a much lower antibody response to omicron when compared to earlier variants, the companies have reported. That’s in addition to the natural waning of vaccine efficacy over time. Each drugmaker is encouraging a third shot of its vaccine to return protection against the disease to high levels.
The rapidly moving pace of omicron and the “increased complexity of deploying a new vaccine” has led Moderna to keep its focus trained on its existing, approved vaccine booster for now, Bancel said. But the company is pursuing clinical trials for new candidates as well, including an omicron-specific booster in case it is needed in the future, he said. Pfizer also has announced that it is developing a variant-specific vaccine.
Moderna’s vaccine currently is federally approved at a 50-microgram half-dose as a booster. That decision was made earlier in the fall based on the drug’s efficacy at lower doses, a wish to mitigate the risk of potential side effects and the need to conserve vaccine stockpiles at the time.
Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, meanwhile, is no longer recommended as a top choice by the CDC based on updated evidence showing lower relative efficacy and a risk of rare adverse events.
