A study carried out in Israel has shown that Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots provide effective protection against Omicron.
The study was carried out by Sheba Medical Center and the Health Ministry’s Central Virology Laboratory.
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The researchers said they compared the blood of 20 people who had received two vaccine doses 5-6 months earlier to the same number of individuals who had received a booster a month before. It was found that the findings were similar to those presented by BioNTech and Pfizer earlier in the week.
Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba, said that people who received the second dose 5 or 6 months ago “do not have any neutralization ability against the Omicron while they do have some against the Delta (strain).”
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She said that the “good news is that with the booster dose it increases about a hundred fold. There is a significant protection of the booster dose. It is lower than the neutralization ability against the Delta, about four times lower.”
The Israeli researchers worked with the actual virus while the companies used a pseudovirus, which was bio-engineered to have the hallmark mutations of omicron. (AW)
