Infected with BA.1 Omicron variant? It won’t protect against newer subvariants: study
Global News
People infected with the earliest version of the Omicron variant, first identified in South Africa in November, may be vulnerable to reinfection with later versions of Omicron.
People infected with the earliest version of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, first identified in South Africa in November, may be vulnerable to reinfection with later versions of Omicron even if they have been vaccinated and boosted, new findings suggest.
Vaccinated patients with Omicron BA.1 breakthrough infections developed antibodies that could neutralize that virus plus the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but the Omicron sublineages circulating now have mutations that allow them to evade those antibodies, researchers from China reported on Friday in Nature.
Omicron BA.2.12.1, which is presently causing most infections in the United States, and Omicron BA.5 and BA.4, which now account for more than 21% of new U.S. cases, contain mutations not present in the BA.1 and BA.2 versions of Omicron.
Those newer sublineages “notably evade the neutralizing antibodies elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination,” the researchers found in test-tube experiments.
The monoclonal antibody drugs bebtelovimab from Eli Lilly and cilgavimab, a component of AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, can still effectively neutralize BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5, the experiments also showed.
But vaccine boosters based on the BA.1 virus, such as those in development by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, “may not achieve broad-spectrum protection against new Omicron variants,” the researchers warned.
Previous research that has not yet undergone peer review has suggested that unvaccinated people infected with Omicron are unlikely to develop immune responses that will protect them against other variants of the coronavirus.
“My personal bias is that while there may be some advantage to having an Omicron-specific vaccine, I think it will be of marginal benefit over staying current with the existing vaccines and boosters,” said Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, and infectious diseases researcher at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut who was not involved in the new study.
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