Preliminary lab studies show two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may not provide sufficient protection against the Omicron coronavirus variant, but three doses are able to neutralize it, the companies said in a news release on Wednesday according to CNN.
Samples from people who had two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine saw, on average, a more than 25-fold reduction in neutralization ability against the Omicron variant than the earlier virus, “indicating that two doses of BNT162b2 may not be sufficient to protect against infection with the Omicron variant,” the companies said.
According to NBC News, As the highly mutated omicron variant, first identified in South Africa, spreads around the globe, scientists are racing to determine how the available vaccines will work against it.
“Three doses against omicron are almost equivalent to the two doses effectiveness we had against the … original variant,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on TODAY Wednesday.
“You may need to go get the third booster faster and that’s something that the health authorities should consider very carefully and make their recommendations,” he added. “But clearly having two doses compared to nothing protects you way better than having nothing.”
