In October last year, shortly before the Omicron variant shattered hopes that the pandemic was burning out, zoonotic disease specialist Linfa Wang published a study that he considers one of his most significant in decades of coronavirus research.
For almost two years pharmaceutical companies and governments had ploughed billions of dollars into the creation, production and distribution of vaccines that would safeguard populations from Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. But Omicron’s sudden emergence and rapid spread underlined how vulnerable the world remained. The vaccines that had been sunk into millions of arms had been designed to neutralise the original viral strain, first identified in Wuhan. While booster jabs offered good protection against severe disease, they did not stop Omicron — which has about 50 genetic mutations compared with the original strain — ripping through nations.
Pharmaceutical companies scrambled to update their existing jabs. A clinical trial of BioNTech/Pfizer’s vaccine that specifically targets Omicron has begun and the company estimates it will be ready by March — arguably several months too late for regions where Omicron has peaked.