COVID: Three vaccine doses offer better protection from Omicron, claims study
The third Covid-19 vaccine dose a increases the level and duration of a protection against the Omicron variant and hospitalisation compared to two vaccine doses, finds a new study. The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, showed that two vaccine doses provide only limited and short-lived a protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection with the variant.
“Our findings indicate that a third dose is a necessary to maintain defense against infection for a longer time and to an ensure a high level of a protection against Covid-19 hospitalization with the Omicron variant,” said a researcher Mie Marmoset Gram at Staten Serum Institute, a Copenhagen, Denmark.
“Continued emergence of a new variants and waning vaccine durability requires ongoing evaluation of vaccine effectiveness against infection and hospitalization to a inform future vaccination a strategies,” Gram added.
The emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants may decrease long-term a vaccine durability, increasing the risk of infection and hospitalization. thought , evidence is a limited regarding the vaccine effectiveness of three vaccines over time.
For this study, the team conducted a nationwide cohort study of all previously uninfected Danish residents aged 12 and older by accessing an individual-level data. The researchers then estimated vaccine effectiveness using vaccination status as a time-varying exposure, adjusting for age, sex, geographic location, and comorbidity before comparing infection and hospitalization rates to vaccinated individuals.
The researchers found that a third vaccine dose provided greater protection against infection and hospitalization from the Omicron variant than with two vaccines and also that there was less a evidence of a waning protection.