Three-shot course of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine neutralises Omicron variant

BioNTech and Pfizer said on Wednesday a three-shot course of their Covid-19 vaccine was able to neutralise the new Omicron variant in a laboratory test and said they could deliver an upgraded vaccine in March 2022, if needed.

BioNTech and Pifzer are the first manufacturers of a Covid vaccine to issue an official update on the efficacy of their shot against Omicron.

In the first official statement on the efficacy of their vaccine against Omicron, The German and US companies said two doses resulted in significantly lower neutralising antibodies but a third dose boosted those antibodies by a factor of 25.

The Omicron variant was neutralised in samples of blood taken around a month after the third shot about as effectively as two doses neutralised the original virus identified in China.

“Ensuring as many people as possible are fully vaccinated with the first two dose series and a booster remains the best course of action to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” Pfizer boss Albert Bourla said.

The Omicron variant, first detected in southern Africa last month, has triggered global alarm about another surge in infections. 

The World Health Organization classified Omicron on November 26 as a "variant of concern" but said there was no evidence to support the need for new vaccines specifically designed to tackle the variant and its mutations. 

On Alert

Hard to Detect

Australia’s Queensland state has found a new Omicron lineage in a traveler who arrived from South Africa.

The new lineage has about half the gene variations of the original and can’t be detected with typical screening, the state’s acting chief health officer Peter Aitken told reporters.

The new lineage has enough markers “to be able to classify it as Omicron, but we don’t know enough about it as to what that means then as far as clinical severity, vaccine effectiveness,” Aitken said. “We now have Omicron and Omicron-like.”
 

UK PM says sorry

British PM Boris Johnson apologised after a video surfaced showing his staff laughing and joking about a party in Downing Street during a Christmas Covid-19 lockdown last year when such festivities were banned. For more than a week, Johnson and his team have repeated that no rules were broken in late 2020 after the Mirror newspaper reported there had been several parties including a wine-fuelled gathering of 40 to 50 people to mark Christmas.

• The Omicron variant has been reported in 57 nations, says WHO

• Botswana, one of the first to detect Omicron, sees no rise in hospitalisations