New variants of the coronavirus may appear this winter, but existing vaccines should protect people from severe forms of the disease, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday, AFP reported.

The European regulator held another press conference on the Covid-19 situation as the European Union prepares to launch a recall campaign ahead of a possible new wave of cases before the end of the year.

Booster with vaccines adapted to the Omicron version for vulnerable people

The booster campaign will be carried out using adapted vaccines approved by the EMA on Thursday, targeting the currently dominant Omicron variant and original vaccines designed to fight the first strain of the virus that first appeared in China in 2019, the EMA said.

But people “shouldn’t wait for a specific vaccine,” said the EMA’s head of vaccination strategy, Marco Cavaleri.

“There may be a completely new option that we cannot predict today,” he added.

On Thursday, the EMA approved adapted vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that target the Omicron BA.1 subvariant in addition to the original strain.

Pfizer’s new vaccine, which targets the BA.4 and BA.5 variants of the Omicron variant, which have become the world’s dominant strains in recent months, is due to be licensed in mid-September. A similar vaccine from Moderna also works.

According to Cavaleri, these specially designed vaccines for Omicron will mostly be reserved for vulnerable people such as the elderly, pregnant women and healthcare workers.

Most people will receive the original vaccines “still able to protect against severe Covid-19 and death”, even if they are less effective at preventing infection, he explained.

Moreover, it is “not out of the question” that new variants will appear this winter, closer to the previous Omicron sub-variants, which are currently vastly superior to the BA.4 and 5 variants.