According to research published Tuesday by Massachusetts General Hospital, the Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer/BioNTech appear to offer significantly less protection against the Omicron variant of the virus than against other variants, according to research published Tuesday by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Harvard and MIT. The researchers say a booster shot would likely restore most of the protection.
The non-peer-reviewed study tested blood from people who received vaccines from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer/BioNTech against a pseudovirus designed to resemble the Omicron variant.
The researchers found “low to absent” levels of antibodies to the variant. In contrast, the blood of recent recipients of an additional booster dose showed potent neutralization of the variant.
The scientists also suggested that Omicron is more contagious than previous variants of concern, for example, about twice as transmissible as the currently dominant Delta variant.