International passengers walk through the arrivals area at Heathrow Airport on November 26, 2021 in London, England. UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said starting noon on November 26, all flights from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini will be suspended and the countries are added to the travel Red List after the detection of a new COVID-19 virus variant in some African countries. Photo: VCG

China-developed vaccines remain effective against the new mutated variant Omicron, but to better cope with this new variant, China has made technological reserve preparations in vaccine development, an official from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. 

Producers of inactivated vaccine, protein subunit vaccine or adenovirus vector vaccine have set about studying the new variant and they are in the process of gene sequencing design, Xu Wenbo, head for National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention with the China CDC, said at a press conference on Tuesday.   

Omicron still belongs to coronavirus and cannot completely break the immune barrier because in addition to antibody immunity, there is also T cell immunity. Though there are mutations on amino acids, current vaccines, either inactivated, mRNA or protein subunit technologies or the second-generation vaccines, are still effective and can reduce proportion of a severe disease and death, Xu told media.  

The rapid spread of Omicron, which is reportedly to be more contagious than the other variants, led to the immediate suspension of international travel by about 20 countries targeting South Africa and its neighboring countries, as of Monday.

Xu said major domestic nucleic acid test kits can also cope with the arrival of Omicron as its mutation is mainly concentrated on the neutralizing antigen spike protein while the major nucleic acid detection reagents in China are designed for ORF/ab gene and N gene.

China's existing COVID-19 responding strategy should be sufficient for tackling the new Omicron variant as under this strategy China will continue to conduct detailed survey on epidemiological studies and gene testing, Xu said. 

Previously, the National Health Commission (NHC) also said that the new variant does not affect the sensitivity of China's mainstream nucleic acid testing kits. 

The NHC said that apart from Hong Kong, no other places in China have detected the variant. Yet China's current strategy of preventing imported cases and domestic flare-ups is still effective in fending off the variant.

In a technical brief on the newest "variant of concern," the World Health Organization cautioned on Monday that assessments so far were based on limited information, but said the overall global risk related to the highly mutated variant was "very high."

Global Times