lightsaber wrote:https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59615005
a third booster prevents around 75% of people getting any Covid symptoms.
Good, not great news. To myself, this means the vaccines are now a 3 dose course.
With SII with 500 million doses on hand and looking to cut production by 125 million doses, there is supply, not demand:
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india ... 1.html/amp
Lightsaber
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ing_31.pdf
Relevant paragraphs:
o There is currently no evidence of increased reinfection risk at the population
level, but preliminary analyses indicate approximately three- to eight-fold
increased risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant.
o The Variant Technical Group reviewed the available neutralisation data from
published international and internal UK studies (UK Health Security Agency,
University of Oxford). UK data will be published as soon as possible and cited
here when available. Across 5 preliminary live virus studies (3 international
and 2 UK), there was a 20- to 40-fold reduction in neutralising activity by
Pfizer 2-dose vaccinee sera for Omicron compared to early pandemic viruses.
There was at least 10 fold loss of activity when compared to Delta; in both UK
studies this was over 20 fold. A greater reduction in activity was seen for AZ 2-
dose sera, and for a high proportion of such sera, neutralising activity fell
below the limit of quantification in the assay. An mRNA booster dose resulted
in an increase in neutralising activity irrespective of primary vaccination type,
including an increase in the proportion of samples that were above the limit of
quantification. This is true regardless of which vaccine was used for the
primary course. These data are from the early period after the booster and
data are urgently required on the durability of neutralising activity
o early estimates of vaccine effectiveness (VE) against symptomatic infection
find a significantly lower VE for against Omicron infection compared to Delta
infection. Nevertheless, a moderate to high vaccine effectiveness of 70 to 75%
is seen in the early period after a booster dose. With previous variants,
vaccine effectiveness against severe disease, including hospitalisation and
death, has been higher than effectiveness against mild disease. It will be a
few weeks before effectiveness against severe disease with Omicron can be
estimated, however based on this experience, this is likely to be substantially
higher than the estimates against symptomatic disease. The duration of
restored protection after mRNA boosting is not known at this juncture
The 70-75% efficiency against symptomatic infection is based on mRNA vaccine booster. Didn't include data of AZ/J&J booster.
Also, the report now say there are 5 different studies all showing the antibody from current vaccines are 20-40 times weaker against Omicron.
And 2-dose AZ's performance against Omicron fell below quantifiable lower bound.
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Edit: The report also mentioned "If Omicron continues to grow at the present rate, Omicron is projected to reach parity with Delta
(equal proportion of cases) in mid-December." The estimation was apparently being made earlier this week
Given almost all the cases in the UK recently were Delta, that would mean Omicron is expected to reach half of all UK case in this coming week.
And they are using an effective reproduction number of 3.7 (95%CI 3.3-4.2), as in after taken into account the current social restriction and vaccination situation.