The COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by multiple waves of infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC). The Omicron variant generally causes milder symptoms than other VOC, especially in vaccinated individuals, and is highly transmissible — leading many to wonder whether immunity induced by Omicron may provide for cross-variant protection and bring us closer to the end of the pandemic. However, a report in Nature now shows that Omicron only induces a limited humoral immune response and little cross-variant neutralization in unvaccinated individuals. By contrast, Omicron breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals induced high titres of neutralizing antibodies against all VOC. This indicates that although Omicron infection acts as a ‘booster’ in vaccinated individuals, it provides little protection from other VOC in unvaccinated individuals.
Authors: Rahul K Suryawanshi; Irene P Chen; Tongcui Ma; Abdullah M Syed; Noah Brazer; Prachi Saldhi; Camille R Simoneau; Alison Ciling; Mir M Khalid; Bharath Sreekumar; Pei-Yi Chen; G Renuka Kumar; Mauricio Montano; Ronne Gascon; Chia-Lin Tsou; Miguel A Garcia-Knight; Alicia Sotomayor-Gonzalez; Venice Servellita; Amelia Gliwa; Jenny Nguyen; Ines Silva; Bilal Milbes; Noah Kojima; Victoria Hess; Maria Shacreaw; Lauren Lopez; Matthew Brobeck; Fred Turner; Frank W Soveg; Ashley F George; Xiaohui Fang; Mazharul Maishan; Michael Matthay; Mary Kate Morris; Debra Wadford; Carl Hanson; Warner C Greene; Raul Andino; Lee Spraggon; Nadia R Roan; Charles Y Chiu; Jennifer A Doudna; Melanie Ott Journal: Nature Date: 2022-05-18 Impact factor: 69.504