Worker uses Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
A worker readies syringes with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Metairie, La. Moderna may have a new COVID-19 booster shot to tackle the omicron variant available by early 2022, per Reuters. Gerald Herbert, Associated Press
Herb Scribner

By Herb Scribner

Moderna may have a new COVID-19 booster shot to tackle the omicron variant available by early 2022, per Reuters.

Moderna President Stephen Hoge said Wednesday that the omicron vaccine booster shot will be ready for U.S. authorization close to March 2022.

  • The vaccine would carry “genes specifically targeting mutations in the newly discovered Omicron variant,” according to Reuters.
  • Hoge said this would be the quickest way to stop vaccine efficacy from waning.
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Stéphane Bancel, the Moderna CEO, recently predicted that the current COVID-19 vaccines will be less effective against omicron, which will require vaccine developers to create a new vaccine, per The Financial Times.

  • “There is no world, I think, where (the effectiveness) is the same level  ... we had with (the) Delta (variant),” Bancel told the Financial Times.

Moderna said it is building a COVID-19 vaccine to tackle the omicron variant, per the Deseret News.

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Similarly, Pfizer said it will have an omicron-centered vaccine. But the booster shots to fight omicron will not be ready for about 100 days, or about three months

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