We are lucky to have such effective vaccines - really a remarkable achievement. They have high protection against contracting the original virus* and even higher efficacy in preventing severe disease and death.**
* Even with the Delta variant, the current vaccines retained pretty good protection against infection and very good protection against severe disease and death. It was however obvious that boosters were needed after six months to counter waning protection against Delta. T cell (killer cell) and B cell (memory cell, which can produce tweaked antibodies against variants) protection still offer good protection against severe disease, even against variants, even though antibody presence did wane - but immune response is a complicated thing, with many different aspects interrelated.
** Omicron appears - so far - to be somewhat milder in that there are fewer percentages of severe illness and death than with Delta; however, studies focusing upon adverse outcomes with Omicron must take into account previous infections and/or vaccinations among patients suffering such outcomes. Part of the issue here is that with more vaccinated people becoming infected (Omicron is devilishly adept at infecting even the vaccinated and those who survived previous infection), the severity of Omicron may be being underestimated … because so many of the Omicron cases are indeed vaccinated. Hence the % of hospitalisation and ESPECIALLY cases requiring IC and dying, is going to reflect the lower % of those outcomes because the vaccines do protect significantly against severe illness and death. Keep that in mind… Preliminary data already indicates much higher rates of reinfection (5.4 times higher than with Delta) and immunity evasion with Omicron, with vaccines waning in their effectiveness to such a degree that booster shots after three months are indicated. Thankfully, ATAGI has already okayed the third booster shot to be administered after three months to come into effect shortly. Based on current data, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines - three doses - give about 75% protection against infection, and 88% protection against adverse outcomes.
Pfizer/BioNTech are already at work tweaking their vaccine for use against Omicron. The latest news is that an Omicron-specific version combined with the general version are likely to be combined, and that the shot will go into production in March.
