Covid boosters are likely to offer good protection against Omicron, a major new study has found.
A team studying the effects of third doses said the body’s T cell immune response will continue to protect against hospital admission and death.
T-cells – a crucial component of the immune system linked with the prevention of severe disease – are thought to provide longer lasting and broader protection than antibodies, which provide an initial higher boost of protection that can then fade overtime.
The study backed up the UK’s decision to offer Pfizer or Moderna as a third shot, with the two leading to the most significant rise in T cell immunity levels.
Professor Saul Faust, who led the trial, said ‘All of the vaccines in our study do show a statistically significant boost… RNA (Pfizer and Moderna) very high, but very effective boosts from Novavax, Janssen and AstraZeneca as well.’
Although Omicron was not actually tested in the study, experts think that T cell immunity could play a significant role in fending off the variant.
Prof Faust said T cell response was not just focused on the spike protein but ‘a much broader range of antigens that might… be common to all of the variants’.
Researchers found that the T-cell response was as good against the Beta and Delta variants of concern as against the original virus that emerged in Wuhan.
Asked specifically about Omicron, Prod Faust said: ‘Our hope as scientists is that protection against hospitalisation and death will remain intact.’
He added: ‘Even though we don’t properly understand its relation to long-term immunity, the T cell data is showing us that it does seem to be broader against all the variant strains, which gives us hope that a variant strain of the virus might be able to be handled, certainly for hospitalisation and death if not prevention of infection, by the current vaccines.’
Samples from the study have now been passed to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to look at how well the Omicron variant can be neutralised by vaccines.
The optimistic results come after a real-world study found Omicron has a ‘substantial’ ability to evade immunity from a previous infection and could spark a new wave in the pandemic.
They also boost hopes for a normal Christmas after Boris Johnson urged businesses not to cancel office parties despite 48 hours of mixed messaging from his ministers.
The booster research, published in The Lancet, involved almost 3,000 people aged 30 or over receiving a third shot 10 to 12 weeks after their initial two-dose vaccination.
When looking at antibody levels in the trial, people who had received two doses of AstraZeneca initially had booster responses that were between 1.8 times higher to 32.3 times higher depending on the booster vaccine used.
After two doses of Pfizer, the range was 1.3 times higher to 11.5 times higher.
The authors said these ratios should be interpreted with caution because they relate to immune response rather than real-world protection against disease.
But scientists have said the research is a welcome stop forward as the world grapples to contain Omicron.
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said: ‘The data clearly shows that all boosters provided a lift to at least one aspect of your Covid immunity, and that side effects were, on the whole, mild.
‘The fact that the mRNA (Pfizer and Moderna) vaccine boosts gave a marked increase in both antibodies and T cells is great news, especially now, when our attention has been grabbed by the emergence of the Omicron variant.
‘We still don’t know how this increase in immunity translates into protection, especially against serious disease, but I am still convinced that our vaccines will continue to provide the protection that we need.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
from News – Metro https://ift.tt/3GeNmWx
0 Comments