Early Omicron infection unlikely to protect against current variants --study

Early Omicron infection unlikely to protect against current variants People infected with the earliest version may be vulnerable to reinfection with later versions even if they have been vaccinated and boosted, new findings suggest. Nancy Lapid Reuters

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Vaccinated patients with Omicron BA.1 breakthrough infections developed antibodies that could neutralize that virus plus the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but the Omicron sublineages circulating now have mutations that allow them to evade those antibodies, researchers from China reported on Friday in Nature.

Omicron BA.2.12.1, which is presently causing most infections in the United States, and Omicron BA.5 and BA.4, which now account for more than 21% of new U.S. cases, contain mutations not present in the BA.1 and BA.2 versions of Omicron.

Those newer sublineages "notably evade the neutralizing antibodies elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination," the researchers found in test-tube experiments.

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