The A50 µg booster dose ofmRNA-1273.211 has demonstrated superiority against Beta, Delta and Omicron variants of concern one month after administration.
encouraging in that they show that omicron may pose a lower risk for hospitalizations and severe illnesses, compared to delta. does that necessarily mean, though, that it will be the same here in the united states? because with south africa, for example, you re dealing with more people who were infelcted with a different variant of covid so maybe they had more immunity. that s definitely the case, that you can t always extrapolate something happening in one country where the average age is younger, where they ve got different protection. they got hit with the beta variant which is more related to omicron than other variants that the u.s. had, like the alpha variant, for example, or delta, so that may play a role. i do think that the data coming from the united kingdom and denmark is more reassuring. that s a little bit closer to the u.s. in terms of demographic make-up but it doesn t so much matter if this is so much more transmissible and you ve got swaths of unvaccinated high-risk
concern that they could get sicker and are at a higher risk for spreading it to others. jim? understood. interesting to watch. elizabeth cohen, thank you very much. all right, joining me now to answer your and my questions, dr. paul offit, a member of the fda s vaccine advisory committee. great to have you back. first, big picture. we talked a couple of weeks ago very early in the omicron wave, i m curious what you learned since then in looking at the data from south africa, israel, what we have begun to see in europe and also here about how serious illness omicron causes. have you learned anything? is it pointing towards the direction that this might cause less severe illness? right, i think we learned from south africa, their experience. what happened with in south africa, was initially they had a big wave of the beta variant or the south african variant had a