Happy Nice Mall

A number of new laboratory studies show that vaccines, and especially booster vaccines, can protect against the worst consequences of rapid spread. Omicron coronavirus variant. However, the highly mutated virus will still cause many new infections in people who have been vaccinated and people infected with older versions of the virus, according to the study.

at the World Health Organization meeting On Wednesday, scientists reported on several studies that suggested that T cells in vaccinated people could form a strong defense against the variant, which could help prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death.

Also Wednesday, President Biden’s chief adviser for the coronavirus response, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci shared preliminary data from his institute’s analysis of the Moderna vaccine. Two shots produced a negligible antibody response to Omicron in the lab, while after the third dose the protection increased, he said.

Other researchers at the WHO meeting presented similar results, showing that booster vaccines of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines raise antibodies to levels believed to be high enough to provide strong protection against infection.

Although the research is based on preliminary observations of cells in the laboratory, nevertheless, A flood of worrying new data about Omicron. Over the past week, it has become increasingly clear that Omicron can deftly evade antibodies that are part of the body’s first line of defense, which likely explains why infections with the variant are exploding in many countries. But antibodies aren’t the only major players in a person’s immune response to the virus. T cells have their own roles.

“The good news is that T-cell responses are largely conserved to Omicron,” Wendy Burgers of the University of Cape Town said during a recent presentation of new research by herself and her colleagues.

Omicron infections are more common in two groups of people who have antibodies: those who have been vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated but have recovered from a previous coronavirus infection.

This week, scientists in South Africa reported that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 33 percent effective against an Omicron infection. study, two doses Pfizer vaccine provides 70 percent protection against severe hospitalization and death, down from about 95 percent before Omicron was detected.

At Wednesday’s WHO meeting, one scientist after another presented similar laboratory findings showing that vaccine-derived antibodies performed much worse against Omicron than other variants.

But the boosters seem to provide enough extra antibodies to reduce these infections. Dr. Fauci described experiments at the National Institutes of Health in which scientists took blood serum from people who had received two doses of the Moderna vaccine and those who had received a third dose. The researchers then mixed the serum with viruses designed to transport Omicron’s surface proteins.

These “pseudoviruses” survived many antibodies from people who took two doses of Moderna, but the boosters produced such high levels of antibodies that the viruses were prevented from being affected by the invading cells.

Dr. “So the message remains clear: If you’re unvaccinated, and especially in the Omicron arena, get vaccinated, if you’re fully vaccinated, get your booster shot,” said Dr. faucet

Dr. Fauci’s warning comes as Biden administration officials prepare for a potential wave of Omicron infections that could upset the healthcare system. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned He said the percentage of coronavirus cases caused by the Omicron variant in the United States has risen sharply and could point to a significant increase in infections as soon as next month. The Delta variant remains by far the dominant version in the United States.

In anticipation of this wave, management is trying to encourage all eligible Americans – those aged 16 and over who have received their second dose of vaccine at least six months ago – to get booster vaccinations. About 27 percent According to the CDC, fully vaccinated Americans also got booster shots

Many countries are in a rush to speed up their populations, but Omicron is spreading so fast that it can outpace even the best of efforts.

“The predicted transmission rates, if confirmed, do not give us much time for interventions,” Phil Krause, a former vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, told the WHO meeting.

This expectation has led many scientists to hope that T cells will serve as an effective replacement when antibodies fail. If these immune cells can fight Omicron, they can prevent many infections from developing into serious illness.

After a cell is infected with the coronavirus, T cells can learn to recognize bits of viral protein that reach the outer surface of the cell. T cells then either kill the infected cell or alert the immune system to launch a stronger attack against the virus.

An immunologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, Dr. Alessandro Sette and Andrew Redd of the National Institutes of Health reported that despite Omicron’s many mutations, most of the protein fragments recognized by T cells are identical to those of other variants.

These findings suggest that T cells trained by vaccines or previous infections will respond aggressively to Omicron rather than wait. Dr. “The T-cell response appears to be largely preserved,” Sette said.

Dr. Burgers and colleagues tested this possibility by collecting T cells from 16 individuals vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and exposing these T cells to protein fragments from the Omicron variant. The scientists found that the response of T cells to the variant was about 70 percent as strong as their response to the original form of the virus.

Some scientists at the meeting warned that this data came from studying cells in a lab, known as in vitro experiments. It will take a few more weeks to study infections in humans before it becomes clear how well T cells prevent serious illness.

“We don’t yet know what these in vitro findings actually mean for disease severity,” said Nora Gerhards, a virologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “And that’s the whole point. Because ultimately we want to prevent health systems in our countries from collapsing.”