Where­as some pub­lic health of­fi­cials and bio­phar­ma lead­ers — in­clud­ing Mod­er­na CEO Stéphane Ban­cel — are sound­ing the alarm over the new Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant, BioN­Tech chief Ugur Sahin is press­ing a more cau­tious ap­proach.

In in­ter­views Tues­day with the Wall Street Jour­nal and Reuters, Sahin cau­tioned that lit­tle is yet known of the vari­ant’s abil­i­ty to cause se­vere Covid-19, and T cell re­spons­es among the vac­ci­nat­ed would like­ly re­main strong. Though the biotech is still con­duct­ing lab tests to de­ter­mine whether an­ti­body pro­tec­tion will be di­min­ished, Sahin isn’t press­ing the pan­ic but­ton.

“Our mes­sage is: Don’t freak out, the plan re­mains the same: Speed up the ad­min­is­tra­tion of a third boost­er shot,” Sahin told WSJ on Tues­day.

The com­ments stand in stark con­trast to an in­ter­view Ban­cel gave to the Fi­nan­cial Times ear­li­er this week, in which he pre­dict­ed a sig­nif­i­cant drop in vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness against Omi­cron. Ban­cel hedged, not­ing he didn’t know how steep the drop would be, but stressed that “all the sci­en­tists I’ve talked to … are like, ‘This is not go­ing to be good.’”

Omi­cron has shak­en glob­al mar­kets since South African sci­en­tists first de­tect­ed the vari­ant last week, and coun­tries around the world are is­su­ing new trav­el bans in the hopes of stem­ming the tide. The vari­ant has been par­tic­u­lar­ly no­table for its high num­ber of mu­ta­tions, lead­ing to fears it may be more con­ta­gious than the Al­pha or Delta strains and in­fect vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple more eas­i­ly.

But Sahin told WSJ he thinks those who re­ceived their shots — es­pe­cial­ly those that got a boost­er — would still be pro­tect­ed against se­vere dis­ease re­sult­ing in hos­pi­tal­iza­tion or death. The CEO high­light­ed that the shot pro­duced by BioN­Tech and Pfiz­er has large­ly low­ered se­vere dis­ease risk from oth­er vari­ants and said most Delta break­through in­fec­tions are mild.

He said the same would like­ly hold true for Omi­cron, as T cells con­tin­ue to of­fer pro­tec­tion even if the virus evades an­ti­bod­ies. The re­duc­tion in an­ti­body pro­tec­tion against Omi­cron is yet to be de­ter­mined, he told Reuters, but he is ex­pect­ing some loss against mild and mod­er­ate dis­ease.

Even so, Sahin is stay­ing calm.

“To my mind there’s no rea­son to be par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried. The on­ly thing that wor­ries me at the mo­ment is the fact that there are peo­ple that have not been vac­ci­nat­ed at all,” Sahin told Reuters.

While re­searchers await an­swers on on­go­ing lab tests, the virus and emerg­ing vari­ants aren’t go­ing away any time soon. The pan­dem­ic has al­ready cre­at­ed a boon for Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na, with the for­mer al­so de­vel­op­ing an an­tivi­ral pill it says is 89% ef­fec­tive in re­duc­ing se­vere dis­ease in in­fect­ed in­di­vid­u­als.

Pfiz­er al­so like­ly has a leg up on Mer­ck, an­oth­er com­pa­ny work­ing on an oral treat­ment. In an ad­comm yes­ter­day, ad­vis­ers nar­row­ly vot­ed to rec­om­mend au­tho­riz­ing the Mer­ck pill de­spite ques­tions about ef­fi­ca­cy and con­cerns over us­ing the ther­a­py in preg­nant women.

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last year sought to find ways to better coordinate large-scale clinical trials in the US — as the UK lead by example during the pandemic — especially for these emergency clinical trials.

The lobbying group PhRMA Tuesday called for more clinical trial diversity in underserved areas, including by making participation less of a burden, and expanding eligibility criteria when appropriate.

President Joe Biden yesterday signed into law a bill requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on the origins of Covid-19 within 90 days.

The new law directs the federal government to “declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019”, including information regarding researchers at the lab who fell ill in the fall of 2019 like names, symptoms, and job roles.