Coronavirus Bi-Valent Vaccine

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Jun

Coronavirus Bi-Valent Vaccine

Post by Jun »

The Moderna bivalent coronavirus vaccine is approved by the UK regulator.

"In each dose of the booster vaccine, ‘Spikevax bivalent Original/Omicron’, half of the vaccine (25 micrograms) targets the original virus strain from 2020 and the other half (25 micrograms) targets Omicron.

The MHRA’s decision is based on data from a clinical trial which showed that a booster with the bivalent Moderna vaccine triggers a strong immune response against both Omicron (BA.1) and the original 2020 strain. In an exploratory analysis the bivalent vaccine was also found to generate a good immune response against the Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5."

As a reminder, one full dose of Moderna contains 100 micrograms of vaccine in 0.5ml of liquid.
Moderna boosters in the UK have been 50 microgams in 0.25ml. I understood that's what Moderna had applied to use for boosters in other countries and is, for example, the booster dose size used in the US.
For comparison, a full dose of Pfizer-Biontech is 30 micrograms.

I was already keen to have Moderna next time, even before this. Apparently the next step is for JCVI to decide what will be used for the Autumn booster programme.

I guess either this or a Pfizer equivalent will show up in Thailand sometime in the next 6 months.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62548336
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/firs ... -regulator
Jun

Re: Coronavirus Bi-Valent Vaccine

Post by Jun »

The US appears to be buying a different version.
"The U.S. government has secured 66 million doses of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine booster candidate, mRNA-1273.222, a bivalent booster candidate containing Spikevax™ plus the Omicron BA.4/5 strain mRNA".

https://investors.modernatx.com/news/ne ... fault.aspx
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