WORLD

Moderna Inc. Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton said he suspects the new omicron coronavirus variant may elude current vaccines, and if so, a reformulated shot could be available early in the new year.

"We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks," Burton said Sunday on the BBC's "Andrew Marr Show."

"If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that's going to be early 2022 before that's really going to be available in large quantities," he said. "The remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna platform, is that we can move very fast," he said.

France's Health Ministry said on Sunday it had detected eight possible cases of the Omicron Covid-19 variant across the country after the government announced it would tighten restrictions to contain its spread.

Omicron is potentially more contagious than previous variants, although experts do not know yet if it will cause more or less severe Covid-19 compared to other strains.

"They are being considered as possibly being contaminated with the Omicron variant having been to southern Africa in the last 14 days," the Health Ministry said in a statement.

As the government confirmed on Friday that it was working with Pakistan to finalise the modalities for delivering wheat to Afghanistan through the land route, it also reminded Islamabad that humanitarian assistance should not be subject to “conditionalities".

The two sides are yet to decide how the wheat will be transported as Pakistan is apparently not ready to allow Indian trucks to carry the wheat from Wagah. The official response followed a formal communication by Pakistan earlier in the week that it had approved India’s proposal to deliver 50,000 MT of wheat to Afghanistan via the Attari-Wagah border.

The government on Thursday underscored the need to retain WTO’s special and differential treatment for developing and poor countries as well as a consensus-driven approach as the core principles, a view that was shared by trade experts too.

“India will fight for preserving special and differential treatment for the developing nations at the forthcoming WTO ministerial conference,” Shyamal Misra, joint secretary in the commerce department, said, while adding that the country will seek to ensure that the global agency remains relevant in promoting international trade.

Special and differential treatment allows the poorer countries to reduce duties and subsidies by a lower magnitude apart from a longer phase-out period.

France is expected to announce that Covid-19 booster shots will be made available to all adults, as well as stricter rules on wearing face masks and more stringent health pass checks to curb a new wave of infections, French media reported.

Health Minister Olivier Veran is due to hold a press conference at midday on Thursday.

President Emmanuel Macron's government on Wednesday said it would focus on tougher social distancing rules and a faster booster shot programme and that it wanted to avoid the lockdowns being imposed once more by some other European countries.