Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted. However, Covid-19 vaccination is still expected to provide substantial protection against severe disease, and vaccine makers are working on updated shots that might elicit a stronger immune response against the variants.
The levels of neutralizing antibodies that a previous infection or vaccinations elicit are several times lower against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants compared with the original coronavirus, according to the new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine on [June 22].
“Reinfections are going to be pretty inevitable until we have vaccines or widespread mandates that are going to prevent cases rising again. But the good news is that we are in, I think, a much better spot than we were without the vaccines,” said Pavitra Roychoudhury, an acting instructor at the University of Washington’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, who was not involved in the New England Journal of Medicine paper.
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“There’s so much of this virus out there that it seems inevitable,” she said about Covid-19 infections. “Hopefully the protections that we have in place are going to lead to mostly mild infection.”
