J & J’s Booster Brings Robust Protection Against Omicron, Study Shows

By Ernie Mundell HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 30, 2021 (HealthDay Information)

New facts out of South Africa finds that a booster dose of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine seems to give potent security towards serious disease brought about by the quick-spreading Omicron variant.

The review, which was printed on the internet and has not but gone through peer review, was carried out in a team of a lot more than sixty nine,000 South African wellbeing care workers. All of them acquired their boosters six to 9 months following obtaining by now been given a single dose of the J & J vaccine.

The boosted wellbeing workers’ results had been in comparison to a identical amount of unvaccinated South Africans.

The review observed that folks who’d gotten the J & J booster shot had been 85% fewer possible to have to have hospitalization owing to an an infection from Omicron, in comparison to unvaccinated folks.

That compares properly to other facts from South Africa exhibiting that a booster shot of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine slash the danger of hospitalization by 70%.

The new facts flies in the face of new suggestions from the U.S. Facilities for Ailment Control and Avoidance. The CDC is even now authorizing use of the J & J vaccine, but is recommending that other vaccines, such as the Pfizer or Moderna photographs, be desired as boosters. The agency dependent its suggestion on a elevated danger of pretty unusual but potentially life-threatening blood clots tied to use of the J & J vaccine.

In a different U.S. arm of a demo that wrapped up in September — when the Delta variant was even now dominating — Johnson & Johnson observed that giving folks a 2nd dose of the vaccine two months following they’d been given their very first brought about security from COVID-joined hospitalization to increase from seventy four% right before the booster to 94% following. Related effects have been observed in trials across 10 international locations.

While the substantial the vast majority of vaccinated People in america have been given possibly the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines, populations in Africa and in other places have typically relied on the a single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot. So, the new results could be a serious boon to folks in developing nations, authorities feel.

The new South African results on J & J boosters arrive as considerably of a shock, considering the fact that laboratory experiments observed the photographs had minimal efficiency towards the extremely mutated Omicron variant. On the other hand, authorities feel the booster may well increase concentrations of antibodies to robust concentrations, or may perhaps function on other gamers in the human immune method to assistance struggle off the variant.

Additional data:

You can find a lot more on the Omicron variant of the new coronavirus at the CDC.

Sources: medRxiv, on the internet publication, Dec. 29, 2021

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