Issues in COVID-19 research and statistical analyses (Part XVV) December 20, 2021
The new variant of COVID-19, Omicron, and boosters from vaccines has been receiving a lot of press. In an article published in BMJ on December 14, 2021, “Covid-19: Omicron and the need for boosters”, the authors take us through a detailed summary about how a booster dose of a vaccine against COVID-19 can led to moderate to high vaccine effectiveness of 70 to 75%. They then discuss the information that has published in pre-prints, which is the most current scientific data published and like the one we discussed last time about a study coming out of South Africa about the concentration of neutralizing antibodies decreasing in the presence of Omicron. They go on to discuss the current booster data out there, not necessarily toward Omicron, that has already been published and how the boosters can significantly increase antibody levels. Finally in a last paragraph they discuss that Pfizer has reported that a third dose of its vaccine provided levels of neutralising antibodies against omicron that were similar to those seen after two doses of the vaccine against the original virus (wildtype). No statistics are provided for this, even though other than news articles, at this time this is one of the few journal articles actually published on this subject due to the newness of the variant that is not just a pre-print. According to an article from VeryWellHealth on December 20, 2021, they report that two doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine appear to be ineffective at neutralizing the Omicron variant, increasing the risk of breakthrough infections. A booster dose, however, restores antibodies to