Omicron strain may weaken vaccine protection

Science and Technology Daily News (Reporter Liu Xia) According to a report on the website of the British "Nature" magazine on the 8th, 4 independent research teams from South Africa, Germany and Sweden, and Pfizer/Biotech Company, for the first time, evaded the mutant strain of Omicron.

Botswana and South African researchers discovered Omicron in late November, and groups around the world have been racing to understand the variant's properties and the risks it poses since then

In the latest study, scientists used two laboratory assays to test how Omicron escapes neutralizing antibodies elicited by vaccination and infection

Results from four independent research groups all showed that Ormicron attenuated the efficacy of neutralizing antibodies more broadly than any other SARS-CoV-2 variant, but the extent of its impact on vaccines varied across studies

Among them, the study, led by virologist Alex Siegel of the African Institute of Health in South Africa, found that the serum (blood containing antibodies of 12 patients who received the Pfizer/Biotech vaccine) compared with the variant that had emerged earlier part) resistance to Omikron is on average 40 times lower, according to a study by virologist Sandra Sisek at Goethe University in Germany; and by Karolinska Institutet The study, led by interdisciplinary virologist and immunologist Ben Murrel, among others, reported that the two groups of participants had smaller declines in neutralizing antibody levels in Omicron

In addition, the Pfizer/Biotech study found that people who had received a third dose of the vaccine had levels of neutralizing antibodies against Omicron that were comparable to those against the other variants