New research out of the Gauteng province of South Africa is providing more data on how effective the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is against the Omicron variant. Published in the New England Medical Journal, the research states that researchers found that a two-dose regimen of the Pfizer vaccine is 70 percent effective against hospitalization with the Omicron COVID-19 variant. As of Nov. 15, the Omicron variant was being detected in more than 75 percent of COVID-19 tests that were being sequenced in South Africa, and the variant has quickly spread to be the dominant strain in many countries. Canada saw a surge of COVID-19 cases over the holidays, with both Quebec and Ontario breaking previous one-day records, which experts say estimate to be less than the true scope of national case counts due to testing delays and laboratory backlogs. In order to assess how effective two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are against the Omicron variant in preventing hospitalizations due to coronavirus, researchers used data from South African care organization Discovery Health to compare data sets of people diagnosed with the Delta variant with those who had the Omicron variant. The study’s data included PCR test results, medical history, chronic illnesses, and body mass index to calculate the number of COVID-19 risk factors per patient, according to the guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
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Source: ctvnews.ca
