Omicron-specific booster may not provide more protection, study suggests
A new study conducted in primates suggests there may not be a benefit from updating Covid-19 vaccines to target the Omicron variant at this time. The work, by scientists at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Vaccine Research Center, shows that animals boosted with the original vaccine had similar protection against disease in the lungs as primates that received an updated booster based on the Omicron strain. The work, done with Moderna’s licensed vaccine and a booster shot based on the Omicron variant, was posted to a preprint server on Friday. It has not yet gone through peer review. STAT’s Helen Branswell has more.