Protection at Omicron drops a few months after Biontech booster


After a booster vaccination with the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine, the initially high protection against hospital admissions and visits to the emergency room at Omikron is reduced after just a few months, according to new study data. This is the finding of a study from Southern California published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

“Covid-19 booster shots with Pfizer/Biontech significantly improve protection against omicrons, although this protection appears to diminish after three months against emergency room visits and even hospitalization,” said the study’s lead author, Sara Y. Tartof, an epidemiologist at the Health Consortium Kaiser Permanente, according to the release. Even then, however, a certain effectiveness remained.

For the study, researchers analyzed 11,123 hospital admissions and emergency room visits that did not result in hospitalization for an acute respiratory infection. In the investigation period from December 2021 to February 2022, both the delta and the omicron variant were in circulation.

The result of the Pfizer-funded study: After three doses, the effectiveness of Biontech-Pfizer’s vaccine against hospitalizations for omicron was 85 percent in less than three months. But it dropped to 55 percent after three months or more.

In terms of emergency room admission, the effectiveness of three doses in less than three months versus Omicron was 77 percent, but fell to 53 percent after three months or more.



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