Head of the Immunology Department at the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario de Santiago de Compostela (CHUS), Servicio Gallego de Salud (SERGAS)
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has licensed Hipra's vaccine - currently called Bimervax - against SARS-CoV-2 as a booster in people aged 16 years and older who have previously been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The EMA began the ongoing evaluation of the vaccine, which was expected to be approved in the middle of last year, on 29 March 2022.
During Pfizer's appearance before the European Parliament this week, a company executive responded to the question of whether "Pfizer's vaccine was tested to stop transmission of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) before going to market" by saying "no".
The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved an updated version of the covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Moderna that also targets the omicron variant. It is intended to serve as a booster dose for adults.
Según datos de la OMS y UNICEF, 25 millones de niños no han recibido sus vacunas contra la difteria, el tétanos y la tosferina (DTP) a nivel global. Se trata de la mayor caída continuada en cobertura vacunal en casi treinta años.
The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, announced in an interview on La Sexta that there will be a fourth dose of the covid-19 vaccine "for the entire population".
In a press release published this week, Moderna has shared the first data on its new bivalent adapted vaccine against Omicron.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) consider it too early for the general population to receive a fourth dose of covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Both agencies do agree that people over 80 years of age should receive it because of their increased risk of severe disease.
The director of the Vaccine Strategy of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Marco Cavaleri, told a press conference on 11 January that "it is not sustainable in the long term to continue giving booster doses every three or four months [to the general population]". Spanish immunologists agree that this is not the right thing to do. In these reactions they explain why.
In the last few days, data, preprints, press releases and even graphs have started to arrive via social media showing how neutralising antibodies against the omicron variant behave. These studies are preliminary and we will have to wait and see how these lab data translate into the real world.