Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday said “sobering” preliminary studies show the Omicron variant of COVID-19 appears to evade some of the protection provided by vaccines.
But the White House chief medical adviser added that at least booster shots appear to help increase efficacy against the variant.
“The thing that’s important is that [Omicron] appears to be able to evade some of the immune protection of things like monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma and the antibodies that are induced by vaccines. That’s the sobering news,” Fauci told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”
“The somewhat encouraging news is that preliminary data show that when you get a booster, for example, a third shot of an mRNA, it raises the level of protection high enough that it then does do well against the Omicron,” Fauci added.
Also encouraging are reports that suggest the virus may cause less severe symptoms than the Delta variant, which has become the dominant strain, Fauci said.
“We’re getting anecdotal information … not necessarily confirmed yet, that the level of severity appears to be maybe a bit less than in the Delta. But there are a lot of confounding issues that it may be due to the underlying protection in the community due to prior infections,” Fauci said.
The World Health Organization has designated Omicron a “variant of concern” — the agency’s highest threat level — because of its unprecedented number of mutations to its spike protein, the component of the virus that binds to cells. Delta is also listed as a “variant of concern.”
Despite fears that Omicron’s mutations may make it somewhat resistant to vaccines, Fauci predicted last week that a booster specifically targeted for the variant might not be necessary.
“I’m not so sure that we’re going to have to get a variant-specific boost vaccine to get an adequate protection from Omicron,” Fauci told the health Web site STAT in an interview published Friday.
“Because if you look at protection against variants, it appears to relate to the level of immunity and the breadth of the immunity that any given vaccine can instill on you,” he said.