In response to a variant of the virus, the UK, Australia and five other countries jointly announced that they would quickly review a revamped vaccine

Recent rumors that the existing Wuhan pneumonia (novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19) vaccine is ineffective in protecting against Variant viruses have led the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), in conjunction with relevant authorities from four other countries, to issue a The statement announced that the Wuhan pneumonia vaccine will be regulated under a faster set of procedures in response to the mutated virus.

According to the Associated Press, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency pointed out in a statement released today that a modified version of the Wuhan pneumonia vaccine for variant viruses that have previously been licensed for administration by the relevant authorities will not require re-approval or lengthy clinical trials. June Raine, director of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said, “Our aim is to enable the UK population to receive a vaccine modified for a new variant of the virus in the shortest possible Time in the future, taking into account the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”

The statement was jointly issued by the drug control authorities of five countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland, and the new regulations issued in this release refer to the regulatory principles used by drug control agencies to regulate influenza vaccine revisions. Under the new rules, vaccine developers must provide solid evidence that the modified Wuhan pneumonia vaccine can trigger a strong immune response to the Variant virus in vaccine recipients and present data to support that the modified vaccine is safe and meets quality standards.

Christian Schneider, chief scientific officer of the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said the announcement means that vaccine developers do not have to conduct clinical trials involving tens of thousands of subjects, as they did when they first applied for approval, but only small-scale trials involving only a few hundred subjects.

Major pharmaceutical companies have now begun developing a modified version of the vaccine for the Wuhan pneumonia variant. On the 24th of last month, Moderna sent a batch of the modified version of the vaccine to the U.S. National Institutes of health for review.