New Delhi: The US pharma giant Pfizer has announced that a new tailor-made vaccine against COVID-19 will be ready in 100 days if it is found that the existing one is not effective in dealing with the new coronavirus variant, Omicron.
Another US company, Moderna, said that it would come up with a special booster vaccine to resist the spread of the Omicron variant. Other vaccine manufacturers like Johnson and Jhonson are also thinking on similar lines.
Pfizer said that it had devised a comprehensive strategy earlier itself to deal with such new variants of coronavirus. The company made it clear that it would be known in two weeks whether the existing vaccine was effective against the new variant or not.
Pfizer also exuded confidence that the company would rework on the existing formula of vaccine in six weeks to make it a more powerful one and release the first batch in 100 days.
Covovax not granted permission in India
The Drugs Controller General of India has not yet approved the Covovax vaccine, which was developed by the Serum Institute of India in association with the US company Novavax.
The regulating authority has sought additional data from Novavax regarding the vaccine. Another reason for the government agency's reluctance to give approval is due to the fact that the vaccine has not yet been approved even in the US.