Pfizer said Thursday, that its vaccine, which it developed and modified against Covid-19, which is undergoing experiments to test its effectiveness against emerging mutated versions, showed the ability to neutralize the mutant Iris during a study conducted on mice.
Pfizer, along with its German partner BioNTech as well as COVID-19 vaccine makers Moderna and Novavax, have developed versions of their vaccines targeting the XBb1.5 subtype. The EG5 mutant, which some call Iris, is similar to the sub-mutant XBB1.5, reports Al-Rai daily.
Moreover it is a sub-strain of the Omicron mutant which is still dominant. The AG5 variant is responsible for more than 17 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to the latest government data.
In the United States, the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 increased by more than 40 percent from the low levels recorded in June. But it is still more than 90 percent below the peak levels reached during the Omicron outbreak in January 2022. EG5 has also been detected in China, South Korea, Japan, Canada and other countries.
The World Health Organization classified the mutated as “interesting,” noting that it must be monitored closely and with greater focus than others because of mutations that may make it more capable of spreading and transmitting infection, or more severe in terms of symptoms associated with infection.
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