Sinopharm, J&J, Sputnik Vaccines Are Weaker Against Omicron in New Study
- Prior infection plus Pfizer’s mRNA shots give best immunity
- Countries looking at booster shots as omicron spreads rapidly
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Covid-19 shots made by China’s state-owned Sinopharm and U.S. drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, as well as the Sputnik vaccine developed by Russia, were found to produce little or no antibodies against omicron in a study, as evidence of the new variant’s vaccine-evading abilities mount.
Researchers at the University of Washington and Swiss drugmaker Humabs Biomed SA analyzed the efficacy of six vaccines against the highly-infectious and most-mutated Covid variant. Only three out of 13 people who had taken both doses of Sinopharm’s shot showed neutralizing antibodies against omicron. For J&J, this metric dropped to one out of 12 samples. None of the 11 people fully vaccinated with Sputnik generated such antibodies.