In two new studies from Israeli, researchers found booster doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine set recipients up to effectively withstand the ravages of both the Delta and Omicron variants.
They found boosted people are 90% less likely to die from a Delta infection than people relying solely on the initial two-dose vaccination.
That protection will be critically important during the next couple of months as the Delta variant continues to dominate throughout the United States.
Lab studies showed the Omicron variant cuts vaccine protection by more than 25-fold in people who’ve gotten the full two-dose course of the Pfizer jab.
In the study, the team found that people who received a Pfizer booster at least five months after finishing their initial two-dose series had a 90% lower death rate than people who didn’t receive a booster.
They tracked more than 843,000 Israelis who had received the full two-dose series of the Pfizer vaccine and were eligible to get a booster. Around 758,000 people from that group actually got the booster.
There were 65 people in the booster group who died during the study period, compared with 137 in the non-booster group. The study ran through August and September when Delta was the predominant COVID variant.
A second study focused on infection and severity of illness, and it also produced good tidings for boosters in the face of the Delta variant.
This study involved nearly 4.7 million Israelis who’d been fully vaccinated with Pfizer and were eligible for boosters.
Researchers found infections were tenfold lower in the group of people who got the Pfizer booster.
Further, results showed that the longer a booster was in a person’s system, the more resistant they became to infection from the Delta strain.
The Pfizer booster also reduced rates of severe illness by nearly 18 times in people aged 60 or older and by nearly 22 times in people aged 40 to 59, compared to those without the booster.
The team hopes these two studies together would go a long way to eliminating that skepticism and reinforcing the program that everyone age 18 and older who’s eligible for a booster should get that booster vaccine.
The study findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine. One author of the study is Dr. William Schaffner.
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