COVID-19: How effective is Moderna vaccine booster against omicron?

CHARLOTTE — New research could help to answer questions about the Moderna booster.

Just how effective is the third shot?
How long does it offer its best protection?

“We’re still seeing wonderful protection against omicron, but it does take that extra boost,” said Dr. David Montefiori, of Duke Human Vaccine Institute.

[ALSO READ: Omicron subvariant detected in Mecklenburg County, health officials say]

Here’s how the research breaks down.

Researchers found the Moderna booster produced 20 times the neutralizing antibodies needed to fight off the omicron variant of COVID-19 within a four-week span.

However, after six months, their research showed antibody levels dropped significantly, more than six-fold.

What does this mean for you?

“Agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, here in the United States, I think, what our data is doing is raising a red flag to them that we might be in a position of needing another boost for omicron if we’re still dealing with omicron six months from now,” Montefiori said.

[ALSO READ: Charlotte sees dramatically shorter COVID-19 testing lines; NC positivity rate down]

Montefiori said agencies, such as the FDA and CDC still need to collect clinical data to back up what their initial research is showing.

But he said in the past, when they’ve seen antibody levels decline like this, it has been a pretty good indicator of what you should expect regarding protection.

“A lot of that is going to depend on how the virus continues to change and whether or not it escapes the vaccines any more than omicron has,” Montefiori said.

Montefiori explained the trial’s process:

“We measured neutralizing antibodies against omicron in serum samples from people who got a Moderna booster shot in a clinical trial early last year.

“This is the vaccine that has been given to people under emergency use authorization (EUA) for over one year. Some people who were in the Moderna Phase 3 trial in the summer of 2020 that led up to the EUA agreed to get a booster shot in early 2021 to study how it does.

“We used these serum samples for our tests with the omicron variant. This was not an omicron-specific vaccine.”

Moderna is in Phase 2 of its clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine booster shot that is specific to the omicron variant.

(Watch the video below: Pfizer and BioNTech begin trial for omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine)