That would be especially important for older people and people with health problems that put them at increased risk, he says.
These findings are similar to those of studies done in labs on the blood of people who had gotten the Pfizer vaccine. Those also showed that people’s antibodies were markedly less potent against omicron.
The latest study, which has been released on a preprint server but has not yet been reviewed by other scientists, involved testing antibodies in the blood of vaccinated people against a “pseudovirus,” which is a virus created in a lab to mimic the mutations found in the omicron variant.
Based on the findings, Montefiori says, a new vaccine specifically targeting omicron probably won’t be needed. During a White House briefing Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health echoed that sentiment, both for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
“Our booster vaccine regimens work against omicron. At this point, there is no need for a variant-specific booster,” Fauci said.
Scientists are doing similar experiments testing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine alone, as well as the J&J vaccine with a Pfizer booster, and expect to have some results by early next week.
Public health experts are alarmed by the omicron variant because it has more mutations than any previous SARS-CoV-2 mutants and appears to be the most contagious variant yet.
Originally spotted in South Africa, the variant is spreading quickly around the globe. It already has been detected in at least 33 U.S. states and appears to be spreading fast. The latest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is that omicron already accounts for about 3% of the samples the agency has analyzed, which is about a sevenfold jump from a week earlier.
The variant is already far more common than that in some parts of the country, such as in the New York and New Jersey area, where it’s showing up in 13% of cases, according to the CDC.
Omicron spreads so fast that it’s on track to overtake delta and become the dominant variant in the U.S. within weeks, raising fears it could accelerate the delta surge already underway.
“We could be facing very severe surges, very severe strains on our health care systems under the worst-case scenarios,” says Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas at Austin, who has been modeling the possible impact of omicron on the United States.
“I’m worried,” she says. “We don’t want to be caught unprepared.”
Data coming out of South Africa and the U.K. indicates that vaccinated people can still catch the omicron variant and can still end up in the hospital, but may not get as sick. But there are many questions about whether that would be the case in the U.S., where there aren’t necessarily as many people who have added protection from natural exposure to the virus.
Nevertheless, the variant could still overwhelm the health system.
“While as a public health community we are still learning about the severity of cases caused by the omicron variant, modeling shows that even if it is less severe, the sheer number of cases that could come from a variant with the level of transmissibility that we are seeing in other countries could overrun our health care system resources, especially if it coincides with the current delta wave and flu season,” says Adriane Casalotti of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit npr.org.
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