Fact Check: The Daily Sceptic’s Take on Triple-Vaccination and Omicron
https://trialsitenews.com/fact…-vaccination-and-omicron/
A Daily Sceptic report about preliminary analysis from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) in December has gone viral. The ONS revealed that people who have triple vaccinations are more likely to be infected with the Omicron variant compared to the other variants. Other data also shows that Omicron is more transmissible compared to other variants and it is more likely to evade the immune response.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) looked at the data from the COVID-19 Infection Survey from November 29 to December 12, 2021. Of 1,816 individuals testing positive with COVID-19, 115 had the Omicron variant. ONS compared the characteristics of people with Omicron and Delta variants, focusing on those with strong positive results, as weaker test results are less reliable at distinguishing between variants.
Based on a two-week period, this early analysis identified seven characteristics associated with Omicron infection, one of which was vaccination status. Compared to the unvaccinated, people who had three shots of vaccine were more likely to have the Omicron variant.
The Daily Sceptic explained that the data does not prove vaccines are to blame for increased Omicron cases among the vaccinated, but only that a vaccinated person is more likely to be infected with Omicron rather than other variants. The data suggest this is especially true for those who have received three doses of vaccine. The study does not address the effectiveness of vaccines for reducing hospitalization and death from Omicron. The study concluded that Omicron evades vaccines’ protection.
Global studies and reporting on Omicron compared
Reuters published a fact check on the ONS data and also concluded that Omicron has significant vaccine evading ability but said the findings have driven misleading social media posts that suggest that vaccines increase susceptibility to COVID-19. Jonathan Cook, communication officer at ONS, told Reuters that, regardless of the variant, the unvaccinated are more susceptible to infection.
Reuters cited a study from Imperial College London which shows that Omicron can evade immunity gained both from the two-shot vaccines and natural infection.
Nature also reported that studies from Sweden, Germany, South Africa, and Pfizer-BioNTech suggest that compared to other COVID variants, Omicron extensively blunts the potency of neutralizing antibodies, modifying vaccine effectiveness.
Booster Shot vs. Omicron
Various studies, including those from the UK Health Security Agency and University of Oxford, have shown that COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against Omicron drops after 5-6 months. However, there is evidence that a booster shot increases it again.
A preprint study from Statens Serum Institut showed that vaccine effectiveness against Omicron among recently vaccinated individuals was 55% for Pfizer vaccine and 37% for Moderna vaccine. Both vaccines’ effectiveness dropped rapidly over five months, but after the booster shot effectiveness increased to 55%. A study from Israel also showed that booster shot creates protection against the Omicron variant.
A study accepted to be published in Nature from Columbia University and the University of Hong Kong showed that Omicron resists antibodies gained from four prominent vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson, and AstraZeneca. Even with a booster shot with an mRNA vaccine, the body shows diminished neutralizing defense against Omicron.
Speaking on behalf of BioNTech on December 8,2021, CEO Ugur Sahin said “we expect significant protection against any type of COVID-19 mediated by Omicron in individuals who have received the third vaccine.” By December 20, 2021, the story changed as Sahin warned that three shots of vaccine won’t be enough to protect against Omicron. “It is obvious we are far from 95% effectiveness that we obtained against the initial virus,” he said. The company is developing a new vaccine based on Omicron spike proteins and their 32 mutations, which they hope ready by March 2022.
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/…-unvaccinated-data-shows/
