The Omicron variant of COVID has gone a long road. When pretty much nobody expected, it started to spread at a faster rate than ever. Omicron has become the dominant COVID strain in the USA, and experts are looking for solutions.
One of the questions that stay on everyone’s lips is this: can the Omicron variant evade the COVID vaccines or not? As the three doses scheme should be enough, a new statement from the BioNTech CEO is there to contradict the idea.
Omicron is likely to bypass a “boosted” individual
A person who gets three vaccine doses for COVID is still likely to get infected with the Omicron variant of COVID and spread the disease if he gets exposed, according to Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech.
Sahin declared for French daily Le Monde, as quoted by Deseret.com:
We must be aware that even triple-vaccinated are likely to transmit the disease,
It is obvious we are far from 95 percent effectiveness that we obtained against the initial virus.
But it’s certainly no use starting to panic just yet. Sahin also added that the vaccine is currently about 70%-75% effective when it comes to stopping COVID infection.
As for the near future, Sahin also has some bad news for how the vaccines are expected to work, as quoted by EuroNews.com:
There will be a loss of effectiveness against Omicron over time, it’s very likely, but it’s still to be measured how quickly. I will not base predictions on preliminary laboratory data but on real-life data, which is much more appropriate.
According to information revealed by worldometers.info, the USA has reported a total number of over 53.5 million COVID infections and more than 838,000 deaths caused by the disease.
Hopefully, the Omicron variant will cause as few victims as possible from now on.