South African Researchers: "Pfizer Vaccine Antibody Levels Drop to 1/40 Against Omicron Variant"

Partial Immune Evasion Ability...Fear of Spread
Pfizer CEO "Highly Contagious, New Variant May Emerge"

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Researchers in South Africa, where the COVID-19 Omicron variant was first discovered, announced that the Omicron variant significantly reduces the number of immune antibodies generated by the Pfizer vaccine compared to the original virus. As the Omicron variant is analyzed to have some immune evasion capabilities, concerns are growing that fear of the Omicron variant will spread again. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, also warned that the highly contagious Omicron variant could lead to the emergence of even more dangerous variants.

According to foreign media including Bloomberg on the 7th (local time), researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) in South Africa announced initial experimental results showing that the antibody levels generated by the Pfizer vaccine against the Omicron variant decreased to about 1/40th compared to the original COVID-19 virus. Dr. Alex Sigal, who led the study, stated, "Immune protection has not completely disappeared, but there has been a significant loss," adding, "It seems that receiving an additional booster shot is necessary to achieve effective immunity."

Accordingly, as the Omicron variant is presumed to have strong transmissibility along with some ability to evade vaccine immunity, there are concerns that fear will expand again. According to Bloomberg, since the announcement of the Omicron variant discovery on the 25th of last month in South Africa, 450 researchers worldwide are conducting experiments, and more accurate clinical trial results are expected in the future.

Pfizer also issued a warning that optimism about the Omicron variant is premature. Bourla, Pfizer's CEO, attended the 'CEO Council Summit' hosted by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the same day and warned, "The strong transmissibility of Omicron is by no means good news," adding, "It means it can enter billions of bodies and new variants can emerge rapidly."

CEO Bourla emphasized, "Only 5% of South Africa's population is aged 60 or older, and most are young generations," and added, "Just because only mild symptoms have appeared in South Africa does not mean we can accurately understand the clinical characteristics of the Omicron variant; it will only be precisely understood after the end of the year."