South Africa: Pfizer vaccine reduces Omicron hospitalization risk by 70%

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South Africa: Pfizer vaccine reduces Omicron hospitalization risk by 70%

South Africa: Pfizer vaccine reduces Omicron hospitalization risk by 70%.

According to Fox News, a report released in South Africa on December 14 showed that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has an effective rate of 33% against Omicron variants and has a 70% preventive effect on severe hospitalized infections.

Omicron has been found to have more than 50 mutations, which may have an escape effect on vaccine immunity and become a new threat to epidemic prevention.

In the past two weeks, the average daily number of new cases in South Africa has increased from 8.07 per 100,000 on November 29 to 34.37 per 100,000 on December 13, but the death rate has not increased.

Monitoring by the South African Genome Network found that Omicron accounts for more than 90% of new infections in South Africa and has replaced the Delta variant.

At present, the virus has appeared in more than 70 countries, and many vaccinators and people who have recovered from the disease have been infected. What is its spread and whether the vaccine has expired, has received widespread attention worldwide.

To this end, the South African health insurance company Discovery Health and the South African Medical Research Council collected a total of 211,000 samples that tested positive for COVID-19 pneumonia from November 15 to December 7 for analysis.

41% of them had received two doses of Pfizer. COVID-19 vaccine, a total of 78,000 people were diagnosed with Omicron infection.

Data analysis shows that the trajectory of this wave of epidemics driven by Omicron is significantly steeper, with the number of new infections and the positive rate of testing both increasing exponentially, proving that the virus has a strong spread and has spread rapidly within the community.

This study also confirmed that the hospitalization risk of Omicron infection is low.

Compared with the general new coronavirus epidemic in mid-2020, the hospitalization rate of Omicron infection has dropped by 29%.

Compared with people who received two doses of Pfizer vaccine, the protection of the vaccine against Omicron infection was only 33%, which was significantly lower than the 80% or more reported when the vaccine was launched, proving Omicron’s spikes Protein mutations can cause significant immune escape.

Omicron can also cause secondary infections. For recovered patients, the risk of Omicron infection is significantly higher than that of various early variants.

The hospitalization risk of vaccinated patients with severe Omicron infection is 70% lower than that of those who have not been vaccinated.

Although it is much lower than the 93% Delta variant body weight disease prevention efficiency, it is still in an acceptable range. The vaccine has a good hospitalization prevention effect for all age groups of 18-79 years old, slightly lower for the elderly, 67% for 60-69 years old, and 60% for 70-79 years old.

Vaccines also have ideal hospitalization prevention effects for patients with chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia.

Recent data released by Pfizer also shows that the vaccine has a reduced preventive effect on Omicron, and the antibody titer may drop by 25 times, which is not enough to prevent Omicron infection.

The vaccine-induced T cell immunity is not affected by the spike protein mutation and can still maintain a certain degree of severe illness. Protection against infection.

In order to solve the dilemma of reduced immunity, Pfizer proposed that the third dose of vaccine should be vaccinated against Omicron, which can make the targeted serum antibody titers reach a level equivalent to that of various other variants.

The third dose of vaccine can also increase T cell immunity. Pfizer is still carrying out further research.

If it is proved that the adaptability of vaccines needs to be adjusted to deal with Omicron, Pfizer can produce the first batch of new vaccines for approval within 100 days.

Reference:

1. foxnews: Omicron variant: Pfizer vaccine protects 70% against hospitalization, study finds

2.pfizer: PFIZER AND BIONTECH PROVIDE UPDATE ON OMICRON VARIANT

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-omicron-variant

South Africa: Pfizer vaccine reduces Omicron hospitalization risk by 70%

(source:internet, reference only)

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