TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A new generation of vaccines could be necessary by the end of the year to counter the Omicron BA.5 variant of the COVID-19 virus, a top epidemiologist said Friday (June 10).

The spread of the new subvariant of Omicron in the United Kingdom is a warning sign, according to Huang Li-min (黃立民), superintendent of the National Taiwan University (NTU) Children’s Hospital. While BA.5 causes similar symptoms to other variants, including coughing and a runny nose, it is deemed more contagious.

While Taiwan experienced a record death tally of 213 on Friday, the emergence of another subvariant should cause concern, Huang said. Officials said no cases of the BA.4 or BA.5 variants had been found domestically so far.

Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, two of the top producers of COVID vaccines, are working on a new generation of jabs which might have to be administered to the public by the end of 2022 to counter BA.5, CNA reported.

The original vaccine doses raised protection against prevalent variants such as BA.1 eightfold, but against BA.5, they only improved protection three to four times, Huang said, explaining the need for a new generation of COVID shots.