“The data suggests this is a more transmissible virus with significant degrees of immune escape, that is going to render the vaccines less effective,” said one expert.
that the result was “better than I expected for Omicron,” showing that the variant was still vulnerable to vaccines overall and that it infected cells in a manner similar to other variants. In showing that the variant only incompletely evaded vaccines, the study also suggested that shots should remain effective against severe disease, especially when supplemented with a booster.
That said, the results overall reported a 40-fold drop in antibody activity against the Omicron variant as compared to vaccine antibody neutralization of the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of coronavirus, a much larger evasion than was seen from other variants. The blood plasma study is still a preprint and has not yet gone through peer review by other scientists, raising some caution, but not enough to outweigh its newsworthiness, said experts.
“I think there's consensus among us that even though the numbers are small, that they're coming from a reputable lab that's done this before and are not surprising,” said infectious disease expert Bruce Walker of the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness.
Fauci also described “very preliminary” study results, also from South Africa, that the Omicron variant tended to produce less severe disease than past ones. “Hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll get a much clearer picture,” he said. “But it appears that with the cases that are seen, we are not seeing a very severe profile of disease.
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