Moderna announced preliminary neutralizing antibody data against the omicron variant following the booster candidates. A booster dose of Moderna’s vaccine increased antibody levels against omicron by 37 times.
Those antibodies “should provide some good level of protection as we go into the holiday season,” Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, told The Washington Post. Health officials have expressed concern that the United States might face record levels of COVID cases in the future as the omicron variant continues to spread through the country.
Even without the clinical data to speak to the vaccine’s protection against hospitalization and death, Burton found Monday’s data to be “very reassuring because we’ve seen time and time again … that the vaccine is highly effective at preventing infection, hospitalization and death due to COVID.”
Moving forward, given the strength of Moderna’s vaccine and the speed at which omicron is spreading, Moderna’s first line of defense against omicron will be a booster dose of the vaccine. Moderna will also continue to develop an omicron-specific variant vaccine that could advance into clinical trials in early 2022.