Vaccines and previous infection could offer "stronger than basic" protection to Omicron, early study suggests

However, the test tube (or 'in-vitro', scientifically) samples of Omicron examined in this new research do show it "exceeds" all other variants in its potential capability  to evade the protection gained from previous infection or vaccination.

Published in Emerging Microbes & Infection, the findings also suggest that although a third-dose enhancement strategy can "significantly boost immunity", the protection from Omicron "may be compromised" – but more research is needed to better understand this.

Reporting on this very early study, lead author Youchun Wang, Senior Research Fellow from the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control in China, says their results support recent findings in South Africa which highlight Omicron was "easy to evade immunity".

"We found the large number of mutations of the Omicron variant did cause significant changes of neutralization sensitivity against people who had already had COVID," Wang says.

Plus, his team's paper predicts that whilst "a third-dose enhancement strategy can significantly boost immunity", the "protection from Omicron may be compromised".

The expert team of 11 scientists looked at 28 serum samples from patients recovering from the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. They tested these against in-vitro Omicron samples, as well as four other strains marked 'of concern' by the World Health Organization (such as Delta), and two variants marked as 'of interest'.

"This study verifies the enhanced immune escape of Omicron variant, which sounds the alarm to the world and has important implications for the public health planning and the development of matching strategies," Wang summarizes.

Now, the team states that more research, carried out not just in-vitro but in real-world studies is urgently needed to better understand Omicron. And, specifically, whether it can "escape from the vaccine elicited immunity to cause more severe disease and death".

"It needs to be re-evaluated whether the antibodies can still be effective against the Omicron variant," the authors state.

The major caveat of this study is that it is in-vitro in nature and that it used pseudotyped (manufactured) viruses. However, previous studies have used in-virto as an established measure of "good correlation" and the current vaccine literature "has established that the in vitro neutralization assays are good predictors of vaccine protection efficacy and real-world vaccine effectiveness".

Therefore, the authors state, their data "may well predict the potential reduction of vaccine protection against the new Omicron variant".