Preliminary real-world data shows that two doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine shot gave about 70 percent protection against hospitalization during a recent surge in Omicron cases in South Africa.
The researchers from Discovery Health, South Africa's largest insurer and South Africa's Medical Research Council said that this was a drop from a previous Delta wave.
Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council, said that boosters will help with the reduction in protection against hospitalizations.
One of the first real-world insights into how much protection COVID-19 vaccines might afford against Omicron is a preliminary study from South Africa.
The study assumed that 78,000 of the 211,000 lab test results from November 15 and December 7 were Omicron, but didn't confirm it. Omicron accounted for 70% of the COVID-19 cases in South Africa in November.
Three weeks may not be long enough to give an accurate picture of how vaccines work against severe COVID-19.
He said in a statement to the Science Media Center that there was a five week gap between the first diagnosis and the first death in the UK.
The latest analysis shows that the vaccine protects all age groups from hospital admissions with the exception of those in the 18- to 29-year-old age group.
Older people in South Africa were the first to be immunized.
Pfizer's vaccine has already shown a reduction in the response of the immune system against Omicron.
It wasn't clear from the experiments how well the vaccine would perform in real-life, especially against severe disease, which relies on other components of the immune system, called T cells and memory cells.
T cells and memory cells stop you from getting sick or dying, although a few people will become severely unwell from the virus.
Pfizer's vaccine was 33 percent effective against infections during the Omicron wave compared with 80 percent in the Delta surge, according to the South African researchers. The reduction in protection could be related to the lab studies.
Pfizer's vaccine was 70 percent to 75 percent effective after a booster, according to data from the UK published Friday.
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