A two-shot dose of Pfizer’s vaccine offers 70% protection against being hospitalized with the COVID-19 Omicron variant, according to South Africa’s largest medical-insurance provider.
The protection is maintained across age groups and a range of chronic illnesses, according to South African insurer Discovery Health, which is studying the Omicron variant.
Early studies have also found that Pfizer’s vaccine is 33% effective against preventing any infection at all by the Omicron variant.
The Discovery Health study included about 78,000 COVID-19 test results for Omicron infections from November 15 to December 7 in South Africa, the epicenter of the current outbreak. Clinical records, vaccination records and pathology test results were examined as part of the study.
While there is a relatively high risk of reinfection with Omicron, hospital-admission risk linked to infection was 29% lower overall for the general adult population, compared with South Africa’s first wave of infection in mid-2020.
The study echoes the initial findings of three other hospital groups that show most COVID-19 patients don’t need oxygen or intensive treatment for the Omicron variant.
