87489
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Omicron Variant Places Question Mark Over Vaccine Efficacy – But Evidence for the Enduring Power of Natural Immunity Remains Strong

by Will Jones
1 December 2021 7:00 AM
Immunity to Covid Is Still Present 12 Months After Infection

Moderna boss Stephane Bancel has said he expects a “material drop” in the efficacy of his company’s vaccine against the new Omicron variant. He told the Financial Times:

I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are like, ‘This is not going to be good.’ … There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level … we had with Delta

He also said it would take months for drugs companies to update the vaccines. This means any Omicron wave is likely to have arrived, peaked and receded before the shots can be manufactured and widely administered.

A more sanguine Boris Johnson claimed on Tuesday afternoon that there are good grounds for believing third vaccine doses will give “considerable protection” against the Omicron variant. This view was given support by Dr Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech and one of the scientists behind the Pfizer vaccine, who said he remains optimistic that the jab will continue to provide protection against severe disease (though, tellingly, did not mention protection against infection). “Our message is: Don’t freak out, the plan remains the same: Speed up the administration of a third booster shot,” he told the Wall Street Journal – though some might point out Dr Sahin may have other reasons for wanting to “speed up” the distribution of his product.

SAGE member Professor John Edmunds has warned that reported infections are rising rapidly in South Africa, where the new variant was first detected last week. While data from Gauteng province, where the new variant was discovered on November 24th, showed a slight decline on Sunday and Monday, this may be a weekend effect, and there has certainly been a sharp rise overall in the past eight days. It is worth keeping an eye on the region to see how it develops.

Daily new reported infections in Gauteng Province, South Africa

It has also transpired in the last couple of days that the variant was already in other countries including the Netherlands several days prior to its discovery in South Africa. Nonetheless, the WHO has said the earliest known specimen of the variant was collected on November 9th in southern Africa.

While vaccines may work less effectively against Omicron than against earlier variants such as Delta (efficacy against which, particularly after several months, is anyway disputed), natural immunity arising from previous infection is looking more robust.

Two new research papers, one in the NEJM and one in the Lancet, provide further compelling evidence of the protective power of natural immunity. In the NEJM paper, researchers from Qatar report on reinfections in the country during the back-to-back Alpha- and Beta-associated surges in the first half of 2021. Examining medical records from all 353,326 people who received a positive PCR test in the country between February 28th 2020 and April 28th 2021 (excluding 87,547 people who had received a vaccine), they found that the odds of severe disease on reinfection were 0.12 times those at first infection (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.03-0.31), which translates to 88% protective efficacy. There were no cases of critical disease or death on reinfection versus 28 and seven respectively at first infection, giving 100% efficacy against these outcomes (though the small numbers here resulted in large confidence intervals). Putting the three outcomes of severe, critical, or fatal disease together, they found odds of 0.1 on reinfection compared to first infection (CI: 0.03-0.25), for an efficacy of 90%.

Four reinfections were severe enough to require hospitalisation, they say, but none led to ICU admission or ended in death. “Reinfections were rare and were generally mild, perhaps because of the primed immune system after primary infection,” they write.

They add that in earlier studies they had looked at the protective efficacy of natural infection against reinfection and estimated it at 85% or greater. Putting these figures together, this means prior infection has an efficacy of at least 98.5% against severe reinfection when compared to the immunologically naïve with no previous infection or vaccination. Does this mean that infection with SARS-CoV-2 will behave immunologically like the other ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and provide long-term immunity against severe illness, even if protection against mild reinfection fades, they ask? “If this were the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus (or at least the variants studied to date) could adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic,” they suggest.

The Lancet paper supports these tentative conclusions. Reviewing all relevant papers on the online medical database PubMed, the authors Noah Kojima and Jeffrey D Klausner from the University of California find seven studies which show the risk of infection decreases by 80·5-100% for the previously infected compared to the immunologically naïve.

Kojima and Klausner make the case for the superiority of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity, including where variants are concerned.

It is known that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces specific and durable T-cell immunity, which has multiple SARS-CoV-2 spike protein targets (or epitopes) as well as other SARS-CoV-2 protein targets. The broad diversity of T-cell viral recognition serves to enhance protection to SARS-CoV-2 variants, with recognition of at least the Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), and Gamma (P.1) variants of SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have also found that people who recovered from SARS-CoV infection in 2002-03 continue to have memory T cells that are reactive to SARS-CoV proteins 17 years after that outbreak. Additionally, a memory B-cell response to SARS-CoV-2 evolves between 1·3 and 6·2 months after infection, which is consistent with longer-term protection.

Some people who have recovered from COVID-19 might not benefit from COVID-19 vaccination. In fact, one study found that previous COVID-19 was associated with increased adverse events following vaccination with the Comirnaty BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech). In addition, there are rare reports of serious adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination. In Switzerland, residents who can prove they have recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection through a positive PCR or other test in the past 12 months are considered equally protected as those who have been fully vaccinated.

Given this evidence, they argue, “policy makers should consider recovery from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection equal to immunity from vaccination for purposes related to entry to public events, businesses, and the workplace, or travel requirements”.

Based on the studies to date, natural immunity appears to convey 80-90% protection against reinfection and, on top of that, 90% protection against serious disease once reinfected, giving around 99% protection against serious reinfection. This protection doesn’t appear to have waned over time or against new variants in the way vaccine protection has done. Omicron may tax the vaccines, but on the evidence so far it seems unlikely to tax natural immunity in the same way.

Tags: Natural immunityOmicron VariantVaccine efficacyVaccines

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

News Round-Up

Next Post

Did Lockdown Make Us Fat?

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

117 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

To view today's newsletter click here

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks
It’s Time to Retire the ‘Deaths Within 28 Days of a Positive Test’ Chart

What’s Behind the Surge of Nearly 8,000 Excess Deaths Since April?

6 July 2022
by Will Jones
President of Brazil Says He Regrets Removing Liability From Pharmaceutical Companies for Vaccine Side-Effects and is “Sorry for All the Deaths”

President of Brazil Says He Regrets Removing Liability From Pharmaceutical Companies for Vaccine Side-Effects and is “Sorry for All the Deaths”

5 July 2022
by Will Jones
News Round Up

News Round-Up

6 July 2022
by Will Jones
Financial Times Censors Criticism of Vaccine Article

Financial Times Censors Criticism of Vaccine Article

5 July 2022
by Toby Young
Boris on the Brink: Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid Quit Government

Boris on the Brink: Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid Quit Government

5 July 2022
by Will Jones
It’s Time to Retire the ‘Deaths Within 28 Days of a Positive Test’ Chart

What’s Behind the Surge of Nearly 8,000 Excess Deaths Since April?

40
Boris on the Brink: Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid Quit Government

Boris on the Brink: Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid Quit Government

41
News Round Up

News Round-Up

21
Hospitals Bring Back Masks and Social Distancing as Covid Admissions Surge – But TWO THIRDS Are in Hospital For Something Else

Hospitals Bring Back Masks and Social Distancing as Covid Admissions Surge – But TWO THIRDS Are in Hospital For Something Else

39
Boris’s Tragic Flaw

Boris’s Tragic Flaw

10
Sacrificing Children’s Needs for Those of Adults was Devastating and Must Never Happen Again

Sacrificing Children’s Needs for Those of Adults was Devastating and Must Never Happen Again

6 July 2022
by Molly Kingsley and Liz Cole
It’s Time to Retire the ‘Deaths Within 28 Days of a Positive Test’ Chart

What’s Behind the Surge of Nearly 8,000 Excess Deaths Since April?

6 July 2022
by Will Jones
President of Brazil Says He Regrets Removing Liability From Pharmaceutical Companies for Vaccine Side-Effects and is “Sorry for All the Deaths”

President of Brazil Says He Regrets Removing Liability From Pharmaceutical Companies for Vaccine Side-Effects and is “Sorry for All the Deaths”

5 July 2022
by Will Jones
Why We Must Never Let the Woke Nonsense Silence Us

Why We Must Never Let the Woke Nonsense Silence Us

4 July 2022
by Paul Sutton
We Cannot Allow Our Schools to Become Woke Madrassas

We Cannot Allow Our Schools to Become Woke Madrassas

4 July 2022
by Wesley Smith

POSTS BY DATE

December 2021
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Nov   Jan »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
The Daily Sceptic
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© 2022 Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© 2022 Daily Sceptic.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment