'For now, I think we should think about this as a twin epidemic of those two variants,' says PeterHotez
Photo: William West/AFP via Getty Images As Omicron numbers in South Africa soar and cases are identified around the globe, public health officials are waiting for critical research on the new variant to assess just how much it has derailed the track to pre-pandemic normalcy.
We’ll have to see how much of a drop there is. We saw some drop in our virus-neutralizing antibodies against the Beta variant last year, and the Lambda. But it wasn’t enough to really concern us. The question is, will this drop even further and at what threshold will it really be a problem? And remember, this is all in vitro laboratory experiments. We still need to do the vaccine-effectiveness studies as well before we get a better picture.
That’ll depend on a lot of things. By the time that booster is ready and shown that it actually works, and goes through regulatory approval, there are potentially going to be a lot of people already infected with Omicron. Then you have to decide whether it’s worth it at that point. It probably is, but we need a lot more information. It’s going to be very complicated if we have to introduce Omicron-specific boosters.
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