David Ho, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in New York, believes Omicron will show a substantial degree of resistance, based on the location of its mutations in the virus’s spike protein.
“The vaccine antibodies target three regions on the coronavirus spike, and Omicron has mutations in all three of those regions,” Ho said. “We technical experts are much more worried than the public health experts because of what we know from the structural analysis” of Omicron.
Others note that earlier variants, such as Beta, also had mutations that rendered the vaccines less effective, but that those vaccines still helped prevent severe disease and death. Even if neutralising antibodies induced by vaccines become less effective, other immune system components known as T cells and B cells will likely compensate, they said.
“Vaccination will likely still keep you out of the hospital,” said John Wherry, director of the Penn Institute for Immunology in Philadelphia.
The first real-world studies of vaccine effectiveness against Omicron in the community are likely to take at least three to four weeks, as experts study rates of so-called “breakthrough” infections in people who are already inoculated, said Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
Columbia’s David Ho said the fact that Omicron is already spreading in the presence of Delta, “which outcompeted all the other variants, is worrisome”.
But others insist it is still an open question.
When it comes to the specific mutations that could help Omicron spread, it “doesn’t look too much different from Alpha or Delta”, said Hotez.
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