How to protect yourself against the Omicron variant?

A fifth wave of Covid-19 contamination affects many people on Monday, November 29. She was able to settle in particular because of “the decrease in the effectiveness of the vaccine”, underlines the journalist of France Télévisions Sofia Dollé on the set of 23 hours of Franceinfo, based on figures of the Pasteur Institute. “At the time of the first injection, we benefit from 90% protection against severe forms. Over the weeks, months, this protection erodes to fall to 50% only six months after the second injection”, she recalls.

To protect yourself from the fifth wave, there is a “strategy that we know now” and which is based on “three pillars” : barrier gestures, vaccination and finally tracking and tracing contact cases, explains Sofia Dollé. But regarding the Omicron variant, “Questions exist: its level of danger, its level of transmissibility or its resistance to the vaccine. What we do know, however, is that among the various mutations that are present inside the Omicron variant, one mutation is in the Spike protein. The Spike protein is the key to the virus entering the human body, leading some scientists to say that the Omicron virus may be more transmissible“, reports the journalist. Regarding vaccines, “Scientists tell us that if the vaccines were effective against the Delta variant, they will not suddenly become completely obsolete against the Omicron variant”. Researchers say more answers about vaccine effectiveness could be revealed in two to three weeks.