This Tuesday, the British Prime Minister, Boris johnson, informed his government cabinet that the first signs suggest that the omicron variant of the coronavirus is “more transmissible” than the delta.
At the same time, a spokesperson for Downing Street, his official office, stressed that it is “too early” to draw definitive conclusions about the dangerousness of the variant, in particular on the severity of the disease provokes and its ability to evade defenses of the immune system.
Johnson stressed, in statements to the media, that booster doses of the covid-19 vaccine are the main line of defense to avoid a new wave of the pandemic.
Third dose to all UK adults
The Executive announced last week that it will have offered a third dose to all adults in the United Kingdom at the end of January, although in recent days there have been critics about the speed with which that plan is rolling out.
“Our booster dose program is the fastest in Europe. We have given more dose than any other comparable country. That does not mean that we cannot do it faster, but we are ahead of our own calendar “, defended the Prime Minister.
The United Kingdom has already inoculated more than 20 million booster doses, including three-quarters of those over 65 years of age.
Epidemiologist Tim Spector told the “BBC” today that infections of the omicron variant seem to bend every day in the United Kingdom and considered that the new restrictions on international travel make “very little sense” to try to stop its expansion.
Sinovac expects to have a new version of its omicron vaccine in three months
The chinese company Sinovac expects to have ready “in three months” a new version of its vaccine against covid-19 (Coronavac) adapted to the omicron variant, which has put the world on alert for its high number of mutations. This was announced by the vice president of Sinovac, Yaling Hu, at a symposium organized by the Butantan Institute of Sao Paulo, entity with which it allied itself to produce the Coronavac in Brazilian territory.
“The development of the vaccine against the omicron strain will be completed in three months “, with a production capacity of between” one billion and one thousand 500 million dose per year, “said Yaling Hu, who is also part of the specialist group of the World Health Organization (who).
That process to adapt the drug to the new variant, initially detected in South Africa last November and about which little is known, it has already begun and includes a plan to assess its effectiveness through experiments in the laboratory and later in humans of different ages, according to the executive.
“In the first evaluation We want to isolate the virus and do a neutralizing antibody test including different immunization“, he explained in his lecture, which he delivered in Chinese, translated into English and was broadcast in Portuguese by the official channels of Butantan.
Coronavac represents 25% of the world production of biologicals
According to data from Butantan, one of the institutions of investigation most prestigious medical doctor in Brazil, Coronavac “has been used in 45 countries” since the beginning of the pandemic, which has already caused more than 5.2 million deaths in the world. With more than 7,900 million doses of the different immunizers applied around the world, Coronavac it represents “25% of world production”, accounting for “2 billion” punctures.
The formula China was the most used at the start of the vaccination campaign in Brazil, which began on January 17, and its progress has allowed a drastic decrease in both the number of contagions as of deceased in the South American country. Even so, Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the coronavirus, With USA and India, counting so far 22.1 million cases and close to 616 thousand deaths linked to the disease.
In addition, there have been six cases of the omicron variant: three in Sao Paulo, who were the first to Latin America; two in the Federal District of Brasilia and another in Rio Grande do Sul, a border state with Uruguay and Argentina.
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