Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine booster “shows up to 85% effectiveness against hospitalization in South Africa when Omicron is dominant.” This was communicated by the company, based on the new preliminary results of the South African Phase 3b Sisonke 2 study. A separate analysis also showed how this vaccine used as a heterologous booster, i.e. after a primary course completed with other shield products, generated a 41-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies and a 5.5-fold increase in CD8 + T cells against the new mutant.
Work conducted by the South African Medical Research Council (Samrc) found that the J&J recall reduced the risk of Covid hospitalization among healthcare workers in South Africa after Omicron became the dominant variant. During the months in which the study was ongoing (mid-November to mid-December), the frequency of Omicron increased from 82 to 98% of Covid cases in South Africa as reported by the Gisaid platform.
The second work reported by J&J is a separate analysis on the immune response to different vaccine regimens, conducted by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Bidmc), which demonstrated how a heterologous booster with Johnson & Johnson in people who initially received the vaccine a Pfizer / BioNTech mRna (BNT162b2) generated a 41-fold increase in neutralizing antibody responses within four weeks after booster and a 5.5-fold increase in CD8 + T cells versus Omicron within two weeks. A homologous booster with the same mRna vaccine (BNT162b2), on the other hand, generated a 17-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies within four weeks after the booster and a 1.4-fold increase in CD8 + T cells within two weeks.
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