Marco Cavalleri, head of vaccines at the European Medicines Agency, said at a news conference: “There may be a completely new variant that we cannot predict at the moment.” But he said, “The earliest vaccines are still able to protect against severe new crowns. pneumonia and death,” even if they were less effective at preventing infection.
He also said it “doesn’t rule out” that this winter’s new variants could end up being closer to the earlier Omicron sub-variants, which have now been largely replaced by the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants. (Compiled by Wang Haifang)