Immunologist says fourth vaccine dose necessary if Omicron stays dominant

A prominent immunologist who helped build the world’s first vaccine against COVID-19 says receiving a fourth dose of inoculation will be necessary in three months’ time if the Omicron variant of the coronavirus stays the dominant variant until then.

SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Variant Omicron cell delta on green background 2021 2022.

Ugur Sahin, a German-Turkish oncologist and immunologist and the CEO of the German biotechnology company BioNTech, told Spiegel that people will have to get a fourth dose in summer if Omicron stays the most prevalent variant until then.

Sahin said new highly-mutated variants of the coronavirus could “certainly” emerge.

He said studies show that people who have received three doses of anti-Covid vaccine, are significantly immunized against Omicron.

The new variant, Omicron, was an unexpected one, Sahin said, explaining that he did not anticipate such a mutation until another year.

The coronavirus first emerged in China’s Wuhan in November 2019, and, after it quickly spread to elsewhere in the world, a pandemic was declared on March 11, 2020. So far, at least 5,944,043 people have died of the disease caused by the virus around the world.

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