EU medicines agency authorises first adapted COVID-19 booster vaccines

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has greenlit two adapted mRNA COVID-19 vaccines targeting the original strain of COVID-19 as well as the BA.1 Omicron subvariant.

The variant-adapted vaccines are Comirnaty from Pfizer/BioNTech and Spikevax from Moderna, which were approved during an extraordinary meeting of EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) on September 1.

Bivalent vaccines are those that cross-neutralise several COVID-19 virus variants and they are expected to be authorised as early as September this year. 

According to the ECDC’s latest overview of COVID-19, also published on Thursday, it is the Omicron sub-variant BA.5 which is currently driving infections on the European continent.