Coronavirus: Moderna launches trials for Omicron-specific booster

Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani reports Moderna is joining other vaccine makers in testing an Omicron-specific booster shot.

Video transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: And welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. We want to get the latest on what's going on with COVID-19 and also with Moderna starting trials for a Omicron specific booster shot. Anjalee Khemlani covers all of this for us at Yahoo Finance. And Anjalee, what's the latest on this?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Well, Adam, we know that Moderna is joining the ranks to test an Omicron specific booster, following Pfizer's news earlier this week. Moderna specifically is looking at both a third shot as an Omicron specific booster or a fourth dose after someone has already received an additional booster of the original vaccine.

That's going to be studied over the next two months in two different cohorts of about 300 enrollees each and should be giving us a good idea of just how-- you know, just how the vaccine will hold up against the specific variants, which we know we have seen many breakthrough cases, which has resulted, of course, in this spike in cases, hospitalizations, and even deaths that we have seen in the past couple of weeks.

So that's the news as of right now. And of course, as with everything with these vaccines, it's just a matter of wait and see. Both the companies, Pfizer and Moderna, are hoping to get all of this and the data in by the fall, which we are-- which some experts are already anticipating might show another surge in cases if we are not out of this pandemic yet by then. Back to you.