Omicron likely to weaken COVID vaccine protection
Early lab results suggest that existing vaccines could be less effective against the fast-spreading coronavirus variant, but boosters should improve immunity
The fast-spreading Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant is highly likely to compromise some of the protection from vaccines, suggest the first laboratory studies of Omicron’s ability to evade immunity.
But the preliminary results — released overnight by teams in South Africa, Germany and Sweden, as well as by the Pfizer–BioNTech collaboration — hint that protection conferred by existing COVID-19 vaccines won’t be totally wiped out, and that boosters should improve immunity to Omicron.