Thread by @annabotting

#BREAKING - Antibodies from the #Pfizer vaccine were up to 40 times less effective at neutralising #Omicron, than against the original #Covid strain…

- this is from a briefing from Alex Segal, South African scientist at the Africa Health Institute…
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These are initial results we’re from lab tests on the live #Omicron variant on plasma samples of people vaccinated twice with #Pfizer.
* the immune escape was about 5 to 10 times greater than for the Beta variant (previous vaccine busting record breaker)
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*But escape not complete
*there was some residual benefit of vaccine antibodies, tho greatly reduced (seen as important — some concern vaccines might not work at all against #Omicron)
*those with 2 vaccines, plus natural infection, fared better (suggesting boosters will help)
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Alex Segal believes #Omicron has
*both transmission advantage
*and vaccine escape.

Big caveat - very preliminary data based on samples of plasma from just 12 people.
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@aTomClarke will be LIVE on Sky News at Ten with all
the details next…

Follow @aTomClarke for more detail.
And @sigallab for the study.
#OmicronVariant
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And from @sigallab tonight:

“Just be be clear on something as I'm still awake, this was better than I expected of Omicron. The fact that it still needs the ACE2 receptor and that escape is incomplete means its a tractable problem with the tools we got”.