People who contract the Omicron variant have the antibodies to counter the Delta strain, according to a South African study, an encouraging sign that means this wave could slow the resurgence of other more aggressive variants.
Hopes are high that the immunity acquired by Omicron will lead us towards collective immunity by protecting the population against new variants. The latter are not known, but the first data on the Delta variant are encouraging.
By analyzing the antibodies of around 30 patients infected with Omicron, scientists estimate that falling ill with this strain increases the ability to defend against reinfection against this latest variant by 14 times. Against Delta, the potential to “neutralize” increases by 4.4 times. In other words, being infected with Omicron “may cause Delta to be less able to re-infect.”
Conversely, the immunity acquired by Delta does not offer strong protection against Omicron, the study said.
The slope to be climbed for the Delta variant therefore risks being insurmountable for it to become dominant again. These data also indicate that a vaccine suitable for Omicron will prove effective against other strains of the coronavirus.
“With emerging data indicating that Omicron, at this point in the pandemic, is less pathogenic than Delta, the results may have positive implications on decreasing the severe consequences of COVID-19,” the study concludes.
Among the study participants, however, several were infected in the past and more than half were vaccinated. The neutralization of Delta by the antibodies generated by Omicron could thus in fact come from these previous immunizations, qualify the researchers in their publication which has not been peer-reviewed.
This text is taken from our newsletter “The Coronavirus Mail” dated January 5, 2022. To subscribe, click here.