Covid-19 roundup: Ugur Sahin says new shots like­ly need­ed for Omi­cron; UK ful­ly ap­proves Vir/Glax­o­SmithK­line an­ti­body

De­spite Ugur Sahin’s calls for calm over the Omi­cron vari­ant — mak­ing a much more mea­sured ap­peal than Mod­er­na CEO Stéphane Ban­cel — the BioN­Tech chief is al­ready pre­dict­ing the po­ten­tial need for new Covid-19 vac­cines.

In com­ments made at a con­fer­ence host­ed Fri­day morn­ing by Reuters, Sahin said that even though vac­ci­nat­ed in­di­vid­u­als would like­ly still be pro­tect­ed from se­vere dis­ease, Omi­cron could see greater num­bers of break­through in­fec­tions than oth­er vari­ants. The mu­ta­tions mean Covid shots will prob­a­bly be­come nec­es­sary every year, sim­i­lar to the flu.

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