Studies Suggest That The Pfizer Vaccine Against Omicron Is Only Partially Effective
Recent studies suggest that even two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine do not guarantee complete protection against the variant of Omicron, which was discovered in South Africa last month.
Alex Sigal, research director of a laboratory at the African Health Research Institute in South Africa, announced this on Twitter on Tuesday.
He said most patients who received two doses of the vaccine after infection neutralized the variant, suggesting that the booster doses might help fight off infection.
He listed some observations of the study on his Twitter.
“Omicron is still using ACE2. The neutralization of Omicron by the BNT162b2 immunity has decreased significantly compared to a previous COVID-19 strain,” Sigal said in a series of tweets.
On his website, the link of which was shared in tweets, the professor said his lab had analyzed blood samples from 12 patients who had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.
“The blood of five out of six people who were previously vaccinated and infected with COVID-19 has always neutralized the Omicron variant,” says the manuscript on its website.
“These results are better than I expected. The more antibodies you have, the more likely you are protected against Omicron,” he added.
The professor also said the lab had yet to analyze blood samples from those who were given a booster dose as they were not yet available in the country.
As per the manuscript, the laboratory observed a 41-fold decrease in neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant.
However, the professor mentioned that the data published on his website are raw data and “have not been corrected to values below the lowest dilution used”.
“We present the change in the raw fold, which can be adjusted in further experiments.”
Also Read: The Omicron Variant Found In Europe A Week Before South Africa Reported It
Sigal said insufficient data were available to prove that Pfizer’s injections were “less likely to prevent serious illness or death”.
Last week, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said, “We believe people are likely to benefit from significant protection from serious diseases caused by Omicron.
The Omicron variant has raised alarms around the world for a further increase in infections. The virus has reached more than two dozen countries, including the United States, in less than two weeks from its initial detection.
Also Read: Global Health Monitor Says World Is Learning Nothing From The Pandemic