Moderna unveils its strategy for addressing new COVID 19 variant

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Moderna unveils its strategy for addressing new COVID 19 variant

Moderna unveiled its strategy for addressing the new variant B of COVID 19 on Friday. Omicron, known as 529, joined Pfizer and Johnson, who detailed plans of their own the same day.

A new Omicron variant was discovered in South Africa and the World Health Organization has deemed it a highly transmissible variant of concern due to the fears that it could be an escape variant that evades currently available coronaviruses vaccines.

On Friday, the Biden administration moved to restrict travel from eight southern African countries in response to the emergence of Omicron.

Moderna is the third prong of its strategy, and it will quickly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate, nothing that the company has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to advance new candidates to clinical testing in 60 -- 90 days. Moderna CEO St phane Bancel said in a statement that as we try to defeat the Pandemic, it is imperative that we be proactive as the virus evolves. We have been moving fast to execute our strategy to address this variant because of the mutations in the Omicron variant. Pfizer and BioNTech have announced that their mRNA vaccine against COVID 19 could be tweaked within 100 days to specifically counter Omicron, while Johnson told FOX Business it is already testing its vaccine against the new variant.