Omicron Threat May be Countered With Extra Dose of Vaccine

Bloomberg

Research from South Africa, Sweden and Germany shows that omicron does, as feared, cause a loss of immune protection — but potentially not a complete one

The earliest studies on omicron are in and the glimpse they’re providing is cautiously optimistic: while vaccines like the one made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE may be less powerful against the new variant, protection can be fortified with boosters.
Research from South Africa, Sweden and Germany shows that omicron does, as feared, cause a loss of immune protection — but potentially not a complete one. In a South African study of blood plasma from people given two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, there was a 41-fold drop in levels of virus-blocking antibodies compared with the strain circulating at the start of the pandemic.
German researchers backed up South African results, finding as much as a 37-fold drop in antibodies against omicron versus the delta variant, virologist Sandra Ciesek said in study results posted early Wednesday on Twitter. A separate study from Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute was more optimistic, finding the decline in antibodies against omicron was only slightly worse than for delta, the strain currently causing most Covid-19 cases worldwide.
The results offer early, as yet incomplete insight into how potentially damaging the spread of omicron could be. The studies are small, so their findings aren’t conclusive. And the data aren’t the full story, because antibody levels are only one piece of the immune system’s response against the virus. So-called “killer” T cells also play an important role in protection against severe disease, and that’s harder to measure in a lab.