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A preprint, an unpublished non-peer reviewed study, looks at neutralising antibody titres against the Omicron variant.
This Roundup accompanied an SMC Briefing.
Prof Penny Ward, Independent Pharmaceutical Physician, Visiting Professor in Pharmaceutical Medicine at King’s College London, said:
“A preprint paper from Oxford today provides part of the data underlying yesterday evenings announcement of the ramping up of the vaccine booster campaign. Using stored sera from participants in the Com-CoV trial, the authors document the lack of protection (measured by assessing neutralisation of the omicron strain) offered by a primary two dose course of the ChAdOx01 vaccine, and the significant reduction in protection following a two dose course of the BNT162b vaccine. The residual protection, albeit lower than against previous variants, offered by the latter vaccine supports the assertion that boosting antibody levels with additional doses of current vaccines should increase protection against the omicron strain while work is ongoing to ‘tweak’ the vaccines. It would be helpful to have similar information from the CoV-Boost trial enabling us to understand whether the antibody boost provided by the BNT162b booster shot given to individuals that had received a ChAdOx01 primary course does indeed offer greater protection against the omicron strain. Indeed this information would be the more important given that the majority of the more vulnerable older population in the UK were given a ChAdOx01 primary course and are now receiving their BNT162b booster shots.”
Preprint title: ‘Reduced neutralisation of SARS-COV-2 Omicron-B.1.1.529 variant by post-immunisation serum’ by Wanwisa Dejnirattisai et al.
This work is not peer-reviewed.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.10.21267534v1
Declared interests
None received.