Analysis: Study suggests new Omicron-specific vaccines offer only similar protection to existing boosters

New Omicron-specific vaccines offer similar protection to existing boosters Nature - Updated COVID jabs have been approved in the United States and United Kingdom, but they offer roughly the same protection as existing vaccines, a study suggests. Callaway, Ewen nature

In the coming days, people in the United States and the United Kingdom will be among the first to receive a new breed of COVID-19 vaccine. The hope was that these updated vaccines — based on Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — would offer substantially greater protection than older vaccines based on the strain of the virus that emerged in 2019.

But an analysis¹ suggests that updated boosters offer much the same level of protection as an extra dose of the older vaccines does — particularly when it comes to keeping people out of hospital. The study was posted to the medRxiv preprint server on 26 August and has not been peer reviewed. ...