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On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech said the standard two-dose regimen of their vaccine was significantly less effective at blocking the virus, but a booster shot neutralized the Omicron variant in lab tests. South African scientists have released early data showing the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has a robust ability to evade the immunity offered by inoculation. The pharmaceutical companies released a statement that their latest data as both they and independent researchers race to understand how much of a threat Omicron poses to the world. However, the news from Pfizer and BioNTech echoed what scientists in South Africa have reported including the standard two-dose inoculation may still induce protection against severe disease. The researcher behind the latest data from South African trials, Alex Sigal said his team had found was better than he expected because Omicron still relies on the same biological mechanism to attack human cells that previous variants have used.

It clearly indicates the current vaccines which prompt the body to deploy 2 weapons against COVID-19 to work in different ways, T-cells, and antibodies will still have some effect. Sigal said his team’s preliminary data has not yet been peer-reviewed and there was a very large drop in the neutralization of Omicron seen with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The vaccines alone appear to offer significantly less protection against catching the new variant. On Wednesday, the director of the World Health Organization’s emergency Dr. Mike Ryan said the vaccines are expected to continue keeping people out of hospitals, even with Omicron, and there’s also information suggesting the new strain may land fewer people in ICUs than previous variants. There was no indication yet that the vaccines would prove less effective at preventing serious illness with Omicron than with previous variants.

Ryan informed the French news agency and said, “We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalization. And there’s no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be so for Omicron”. He also pointed to early, real-world information coming from South Africa, which suggests that while Omicron is extremely contagious, it does not appear to make people any sicker than Delta or other strains. South African health officials are racing to vaccinate people as Omicron spreads fast across the country. A senior researcher and vaccinologist Professor Shabir Madhi said, “What that tells us is that we’re building up some level of immunity, even against Omicron, which is adequate to prevent the progression from infection to severe disease and death”.