The Maryland National Guard Specialist James Truong is giving a vaccine. The new omicron variant means that people need a booster for their Moderna vaccine.
Chip Somodevilla is a photographer.
The Moderna vaccine is a vaccine that protects people against the omicron variant.
The blood samples from 30 people who had gotten two Moderna shots were studied and found that the antibodies in their blood were at least 50 times less effective than the omicron virus.
Pfizer's vaccine is less protective against omicron.
David Montefiore, a researcher at Duke University, says that the Moderna vaccine's effectiveness against omicron is 50 times less than it is against the original form of the virus.
There was good news too. 17 more people in the study received a Moderna booster. The antibodies in their blood were very effective at blocking the virus, Montefiore says.
Montefiore says that if omicron becomes a dominant variant, it's going to become even more important that people get their boost.
He says it would be important for elderly people and people with other health problems that put them at increased risk.
These findings are similar to studies done in the lab on the blood of people who had gotten the Pfizer vaccine. The people's antibodies were less potent against omicron.
The latest study, which has been submitted to a pre-print server but has not yet been reviewed by other scientists, involved testing the blood of people who have been vaccined against a "pseudoviruses."
Montefiore says a vaccine targeting omicron probably won't be needed. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health echoed that during a White House briefing.
The booster vaccine regimen works against omicron. Fauci said there is no need for a variant-specific booster.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is being tested alone and with a Pfizer booster, and scientists expect to have some results by early next week.
Public health experts are alarmed by the omicron variant because it is the most contagious variant yet, and has more mutations than any previous version.
The variant was first spotted in South Africa. It has been found in at least 33 states in the U.S. The CDC estimates that omicron accounts for 3% of the samples it has analyzed, which is seven times more than it was a week earlier.
In New York and New Jersey, where it's showing up in 13% of cases, the variant is more common than it is in other parts of the country.
Omicron is on track to overtake delta and become the dominant Mutant in the U.S. within weeks, raising fears that it could accelerate the surge already underway.
Lauren Ancel-Meyers at the University of Texas in Austin has been modeling the possible impact of omicron on the U.S.
She says she is worried. We don't want to be unprepared.
According to data from South Africa and the UK, people who have been vaccined can still catch the virus and end up in the hospital, but may not get as sick. There are many questions about whether that would be the case in this country, where there aren't as many people who have added protection from natural exposure to the virus.
The health system could still be overwhelmed by the variant.
Modelling shows that even if the omicron variant is less severe, the sheer number of cases that could come from a variant with the level of transmissibility that we are seeing in other countries could still be there.
