Safeway pharmacist Shahrzad Khoobyari (R) injects a Pfizer COVID-19 booster vaccine into the arm of Chen Knifsend at a booster vaccination clinic on October 1, 2021 in San Rafael, California.
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The fourth shot of the Covid-19 vaccine boosts antibodies to higher levels than the third shot, but it’s not enough to prevent Omicron infections, according to a preliminary study. in Israel.
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center injected a second booster in a trial among its employees and is studying the effects of the booster Pfizer in 154 people after two weeks and the booster shot Moderna in 120 people in a week, said Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the infectious diseases unit.
They were compared with a control group that did not receive a fourth dose. The hospital said those in the Moderna group had previously received three doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The vaccine raised the number of antibodies “even a little bit higher than what we had after the third dose,” Regev-Yochay said.
“However, this is probably not enough for omicrons,” she told reporters. “We now know that the level of antibodies needed to protect against and not get infected from Omicron is probably too high for a vaccine, even if it’s a good vaccine.”
The findings, which the hospital says are a world first, are preliminary and have not been published.
Israel was the fastest country to roll out the initial vaccination against Covid a year ago and last month began giving the fourth dose, or second booster, to vulnerable and high-risk groups. .
