By RAMY AL­LA­HOUM, Al Jazeera

● The as­sess­ment from the head of the vac­cine mak­er comes as Hong Kong and oth­ers an­nounce trav­el curbs ●

(AL JAZEERA) — Ex­ist­ing COVID vac­cines will strug­gle against the “high­ly trans­mis­si­ble” Omi­cron vari­ant, Stephane Ban­cel, head of US vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­er Mod­er­na, told the Fi­nan­cial Times on Tues­day, adding that it will take two weeks to know whether cur­rent vac­cines are ef­fec­tive and months to de­vel­op a new one.

A grow­ing num­ber of coun­tries have im­posed trav­el re­stric­tions af­ter the new vari­ant with a high num­ber of mu­ta­tions was de­tect­ed in South Africa last week.

On Mon­day, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) warned that the glob­al risk from the spread of Omi­cron was “very high”.

Mean­while, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has said the strain should be con­sid­ered a “cause for con­cern, not a cause for pan­ic”. No Omi­cron-linked deaths have been re­port­ed yet.