The European Union's drug regulator is prepared for the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines may be tweaked to fight the new Omicron variant although there is no evidence yet that it will be necessary, the agency's chief said on Tuesday.
"There is no answer whether we will need to adapt vaccines," European Medicines Agency's (EMA) executive director Emer Cook said in a media briefing.
The agency needs more data on vaccine efficacy, the variant's transmissibility and the severity of the disease it causes, she said.
Cook said she did not think the world would still be in a pandemic a year ago when the agency gave the regulatory green light for the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, the first in the region.
The European Union has the capacity to make 300 million doses of vaccines per month as drugmakers have ramped up output to meet the growing demand for its 450 million residents, she said.