Researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, found omicron resulted in about a 40-fold reduction in levels of neutralizing antibodies produced by people who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech SE shot, compared with the strain detected in China almost two years ago.

The loss of immune protection is “robust, but not complete,” Alex Sigal, head of research at the laboratory, said in an online presentation of the first reported experiments gauging the effectiveness of the vaccine against the new variant.

“There will be more breakthrough” of vaccine-induced immunity, Sigal said. “A good booster probably would decrease your chance of infection, especially severe infection leading to more severe disease. People who haven’t had a booster should get one, and people who have been previously infected should be vaccinated.”

Representatives for Pfizer and BioNTech, makers of the first COVID vaccine cleared in the U.S., didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The study may add to the debate over whether tweaked, omicron-targeted vaccines will be needed soon to continue effectively fighting the pandemic. Moderna Inc. President Stephen Hoge has said there’s a risk that existing vaccines will be less effective against the strain, although U.S. medical adviser Anthony Fauci said the severity of illness caused by the variant may be limited.

Omicron’s rapid spread in South Africa has raised concern that the immune protection from vaccination or a previous bout of COVID-19 may be insufficient to stop reinfections or stem a fresh wave of cases and hospitalizations. The World Health Organization has warned omicron could fuel surges with “severe consequences” amid signs that it makes the coronavirus more transmissible.

Cautious Optimism

Still, the jump in cases in South Africa following omicron’s emergence hasn’t overwhelmed hospitals so far, prompting some cautious optimism that the new strain may cause mostly mild illness. 

Since South Africa announced the discovery of omicron on Nov. 25, about 450 researchers globally have been working to isolate the variant from patient specimens, grow it in labs, verify its genomic sequence, and establish methods to test it in blood-plasma samples, according to the WHO.

The work in Sigal’s lab involved testing 14 blood plasma samples collected from a dozen people who had been given a second Pfizer-BioNTech shot about a month earlier to gauge the concentration of antibodies needed to neutralize, or block, the virus. Levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron were notably higher in a subset of participants who had a bout of COVID about a year earlier, Sigal said.

That’s “promising,” said John Wherry, director of the institute for immunology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. It likely means an additional dose of the currently available vaccines would boost levels of neutralizing antibodies to omicron, though more data are needed to confirm that, he said.

The results are preliminary and exact levels of immune escape may change, Sigal said. The results, along with those from other labs studying the strain, will help determine whether existing COVID vaccines need to be altered to protect against omicron. 

Sigal’s laboratory was the first to isolate the beta variant, a strain of the coronavirus that was identified in South Africa in late 2020. He noted that omicron escapes antibody neutralization more readily than beta, which had been considered the most immune evasive of the variants of concern detected previously.