New study finds omicron variant better at evading immunity

by Shirin Ali | Jan. 3, 2022 | Jan. 03, 2022

Story at a glance

The omicron variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in multiple countries around the world, including here in the U.S.
Danish scientists published a new study that found the omicron variant is better at evading immunity than the delta variant.
Scientists also found that vaccine effectiveness was reduced to around 40 percent against symptoms and to 80 percent against severe disease when dealing with the omicron variant.

Scientists have discovered that the omicron variant can evade immunity from COVID-19 more so than any other previous variants discovered during the course of the pandemic.

In a study, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Statistics Denmark and Statens Serum Institute found that the omicron variant is better described as evading immunity rather than having greater transmissibility.

Researchers studied over 11,000 Danish households and found that those who had the omicron variant had a 31 percent chance of a secondary attack rate (SAR), which refers to the probability an infection occurs within a specific group like a household or close contacts. Households with the delta variant had a 21 percent SAR.

Unvaccinated individuals also had an increased risk of transmission while booster-vaccinated people had a reduced transmission risk, compared to fully vaccinated people.

“Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the omicron variant primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility,” the study said.

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Scientists also found that vaccine effectiveness was reduced to around 40 percent against symptoms and to 80 percent against severe disease when dealing with the omicron variant. Booster shots helped significantly, with the study noting vaccine effectiveness was reduced to only 86 percent and 98 percent against severe disease.

The Danish study has not yet been peer reviewed and indicates that the omicron variant is better at evading vaccinated peoples’ immunity than the delta variant. That helps explain why the omicron variant is spreading so quickly, as White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci recently noted.

“It’s a doubling time of two to three days, closer to two days,” Fauci said to ABC News. “Which means that if you start off with a few percentage of the isolates being omicron, and you do the math and double that every couple of days, it’s not surprising that just a week or two ago we had only 8 percent to 10 percent, and now we have 73 percent of all the isolates are omicron.”

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned of a potential increase of omicron variant infections in the U.S., citing two factors: increased transmissibility and the ability of the variant to evade immunity conferred by past infection or vaccination.

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