Category: Vaccine Waning

Vaccines: Pfizer CEO says fourth dose of vaccine may be needed sooner than expected

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Wednesday that people might need a fourth Covid-19 shot sooner than expected after preliminary research shows the new Omicron variant can undermine protective antibodies generated by the vaccine the company developed with BioNTech.  More...

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UK SAGE: 1,000 Omicron hospitalizations a day by new year

BBC Health Reporter: “The number of people needing hospital treatment from the Omicron variant may reach at least 1,000 a day in England by the end of the year without extra restrictions being put in place – Sage scientists have told ministers.”  More...

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Preprint: Omicron incompletely escapes immunity induced by the Pfizer vaccine

Laboratory research from South Africa strongly suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant escapes antibody immunity induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) vaccine, but that considerable immunity is retained in people who were both vaccinated and previously infected.  More...

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Norway: “situation is more worrying now than in previous pandemic waves”

“The threat from Omicron is enormous”. NIPH director Camilla Stoltenberg says the Omicron variant of the coronavirus can cause a lot of infection and disease, “perhaps more than before in the pandemic”.  More...

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Norway: “The number of corona inpatients who need intensive care is higher than before, and it seems to be increasing”

“The death toll has increased week by week now… we are falling behind in the fight against infection,” said the chief physician at the University Hospital of Northern Norway, Mats Gilbert.  More...

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FFP2 masks more effective at preventing Covid infection than vaccines

Max Planck: “When both wear a surgical mask, while the infectious is speaking, the very conservative upper bound remains below 30% after 1h, but, when both wear a well-fitting FFP2 mask, it is 0.4%”

We find, for a typical SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectious dose, that social distancing alone, even at 3m between two speaking individuals, leads to an upper bound of 90% for risk of infection after a few minutes.  More...

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