Sandile Cele's Christmas present to SA last year was a breakthrough that made him the first scientist to grow a live virus of Covid-19's Beta variant within two months of its discovery.
“There is no reason to conclude vaccination will not protect from severe disease with Omicron,” said Sigal.
The institute’s experiments looked at the protection from Omicron in people previously infected with Covid-19 who had received two Pfizer shots.“Protection from severe disease does go down but you retain protection of around 70%.“The vaccine’s ability to elicit antibodies is definitely diminished with Omicron compared with the sequence the vaccine was designed for, however this effect is incomplete. The vaccine’s effectiveness doesn’t go down to levels we’d expect to be non-effective.