Ohio University scientists have found out that booster doses of the MODERNA and PFizer / Biontech vaccine are capable of protecting against an oomicron-option of coronavirus, which reduces the effectiveness of the first two doses. Preliminary research results are presented in the article published in the Biorxiv preprints archives.
Experts revealed that the variant of coronavirus B.1.1.529 is capable of significantly shy away from neutralizing antibodies produced after two doses of the vaccine, compared with the previous SARS-COV-2 strains. To do this, they took samples of blood serum from 48 medical workers in 3-4 weeks after the second dose of Moderna or Pfizer and estimated the effectiveness of antibodies against alpha, beta, delta and oomicron-options of coronavirus.
It turned out that the oomikron-option demonstrates resistance to neutralizing antibodies, which is 22.9 times higher than the resistance of the original strain D614G. In this case, the resistance of alpha, beta and delta-options is only 1.2, 4.4 and two times higher, respectively. In addition, scientists estimated the effect of booster RNA vaccines in 1-11 weeks, which significantly increased the neutralizing activity of antibodies against the oomikron option.