Havana, December 1st.- "We carefully observe the reports on the behavior of the new Omicron variant. We are already designing specific vaccines. If necessary, we will develop it in a short time," he assured, through his Twitter account, Dr. Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of BioCubaFarma.
Knowing that achieving high levels of immunity against the pathogen is key for countries to face possible variants of the coronavirus, Martínez Díaz recommended in another tweet that, for the moment, the most important thing is to continue with the vaccination strategy, including the booster dose that has been applied since last November, as well as maintaining the hygienic-sanitary measures for the prevention and control of COVID-19.
In recent days, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified as "of concern" the genetic variant B.1.1.529 of SARS-COV-2, named Ómicron, and reported for the first time from South Africa, on the past 24 of November.
The health agency warned, through its website, that this variant has a large number of mutations, and preliminary evidence suggests a higher risk of reinfection, which in the opinion of the who is indicative evidence of a detrimental change in the epidemiology of COVID-19.
The WHO qualifies a variant as "of concern" when the strains have genetic changes that affect the characteristics of the virus, such as transmissibility, severity of the disease, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape.