A report out of South Africa offered a first glimpse at how vaccinated people might fare against the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Laboratory experiments found that Omicron seems to dull the power of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but also hinted that people who have received a booster shot might be better protected.
The study, published online on Tuesday, found that antibodies produced by vaccinated people were much less successful at keeping the Omicron variant from infecting cells than other forms of the coronavirus.
Scientists said the results were somewhat worrisome, but no cause for panic. The data suggests that vaccinated people might be vulnerable to breakthrough infections with Omicron, which is spreading rapidly in South Africa and has appeared in dozens of countries around the world.
But vaccines stimulate a wide-ranging immune response that involves more than just antibodies. So these experiments offer an incomplete picture of how well the vaccine protects against hospitalization or death from Omicron.
“While I think there’s going to be a lot of infection, I’m not sure this is going to translate into systems collapsing,” Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, who led the research,…
