A leading Dublin immunologist has warned that that a new Covid-19 subvariants could see vaccines become "less effective".
Dr Kingston Mills is Professor of Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, and he told Dublin Live that there are new Omicron subvariants currently circulating in Ireland, such as BA4 and BA5 and there are also concerns of a new XBB.1.5 variant that has been detected in the US.
He said: "It's not Omicron anymore, there are subvariants of Omircron now. We had BA1 and BA2, and now BA4 and BA5. With BA5, it's a subvariant of Omicron which is very different from Omicron in that it is more readily transmitted and it's more capable of evading the immune response that is generated in vaccines.
