Share on PinterestEarly studies indicate a drop in effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in the fight against Omicron. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
• A two-shot course of mRNA vaccines or the one-shot J&J vaccine seem to be less effective against the Omicron vari-ant, especially for infec-tion.
• Data so far indicates that mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) offer the most prom-ising protection against both in-fection and hospi-taliza-tion, in line with the CDC’s recommendations.
• Current figures suggest that vaccines offer 30 to 40 percent protection against infection and around 70 percent protec-tion against hospitaliza-tion without boosters.
• Newer data is confirming that a third dose in-creases antibody production and boosts effectiveness against infection to around 75 percent and 85 percent for severe disease.
This is a developing story. We’ll update it as we learn more.
Omicron is spreading rapidly across the globe, and researchers are racing to understand how vac-cines will hold up against this new variant of the coro-navirus.
Several preliminary studies have assessed the effec-tiveness of cur-rent COVID-19 vaccines in use against the Omicron variant.
So far, one- or two-dose vaccines provide far less protection than those paired with a booster, but they still do appear to protect against severe disease.
Studies conducted in the lab and the real world show that full vac-cination plus a booster shot pro-vides stronger protection against infection with Omicron.
It is important to remember most of these are lab studies and may not reflect the vaccines’ real-world performance.
Here is what we know so far.
Omicron vs. Delta: Vaccines seem less effective
Early estimates suggest that vac-cine effectiveness against symp-tomatic infection with Omicron is significantly lower compared with the Delta variant.
A report by Imperial College Lon-don indicated that the risk of rein-fection with Omicron was 5.4 times greater than the Delta vari-ant. Previously having COVID-19 also afforded little protection against reinfection with Omicron.
