“The highly contagious omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus often does an end run around the immunological protections of vaccination or prior infection. But recent data from the U.K. and Canada indicate that these breakthrough omicron infections are much less dangerous than first-time infections in unvaccinated people.
Ontario public health authorities report that as of yesterday, 2,093 and 288 people are being treated for omicron variant infections in hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs), respectively. The hospitalization rate per million among unvaccinated people stands at 532.7; it’s 105.9 for folks vaccinated with at least two doses. This means that the reduction of hospitalization risk for those inoculated with at least two doses is 80.1 percent.
The ICU occupancy rate per million is 135.6 for unvaccinated people and just 9.2 for those who have gotten two doses of COVID-19 vaccines. So vaccination reduces the ICU risk by 93.2 percent.”
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“These British and Canadian findings mirror those most recently reported by the New York State Health Department. It finds that the daily rate per 100,000 of COVID-19 hospitalizations stands at 4.56 for fully vaccinated people, compared to 58.27 for unvaccinated people. That means vaccinations are 92.3 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from COVID-19.”
https://www.vox.com/22850441/covid-omicron-china-lockdown-olympics-travel-ban
“The omicron variant, the latest curveball in the pandemic, may lead to less severe cases of Covid-19 than earlier strains of the coronavirus, according to one of the largest real-world studies of omicron released so far.
That’s good news, but it could be overshadowed by other data showing that the variant is far more contagious than any version of the virus to date — and that it can evade some immune protection from vaccines and prior infection.
Taken together, these traits make for a counterintuitive situation: Omicron poses a lower risk to most individuals, at least for those who are vaccinated, but the threat to the overall population is high. The question now is whether omicron will infect so many people that it overwhelms the health care system and drives up hospitalizations and deaths — in spite of the smaller percentage of people who come down with severe disease.
The answer is partly in our hands. The strategies that have contained Covid-19 throughout the pandemic still work against omicron, but governments, institutions, and individuals have to be willing to use them.”
“Preliminary laboratory research by Pfizer/BioNTech finds that a third booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine successfully neutralizes—that is, blocks—the omicron variant of the virus from entering and infecting cells. The researchers tested the new variant against antibodies produced by people one month after they had been inoculated with a third booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. They report that the boosted level of antibodies “provides a similar level of neutralizing antibodies to Omicron as is observed after two doses against wild-type and other variants that emerged before Omicron. These antibody levels are associated with high efficacy against both the wild-type virus and these variants.””
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“Keep firmly in mind that these are very preliminary laboratory results that need to be confirmed by real-world epidemiological evidence with respect to breakthrough infections and disease severity. Nevertheless, these results corroborate that people who have already gotten two doses of COVID-19 vaccines or have already recovered from a prior COVID-19 infection should go get a booster shot and that people who are not yet fully vaccinated should delay no further.
In case these lab results don’t hold up in the real world, vaccine makers are already working on tweaks to their inoculations that specifically target the omicron variant. The updated vaccines could become available as early as March 2022.”