The Omicron variant has increased SARs-CoV-2 infections in double vaccinated individuals globally. People that had received a double dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, had a 35% (95%CI: 15% – 58%) increase in SARs-CoV-2 infections when compared to people that received two doses of BioNTech/Pfizer. To tackle rising infections, the UK accelerated booster vaccination programmes used mRNA vaccines (BioNTech/Pfizer & Moderna) irrespective of an individual’s first two vaccine types.
We analysed a total of 19,692 participants who received their booster vaccination between September 16th 2021 and January 5th 2022.
After adjusting for age, sex, clinical vulnerability status, and socioeconomic status, we found no difference between the risk of infection of SARs-CoV-2 between those who received different COVID-19 vaccines as their primary course in addition to an mRNA-based booster vaccine.
Our findings demonstrate the importance of booster (third) doses to maintain protection and suggest that these should be prioritised to those who received Oxford/AstraZeneca as their primary course.
This work has been reported on here:
For a link to the full article please see:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.04.22270479v1