Vaccine boosters provide defense against severe Covid, new study finds

Vaccine boosters can help a person fend off severe Covid illnesses, according to a new study out of UW Medicine.

The most recent pandemic news is that current subvariants of omicron are really good at evading immune response. In other words, the virus is able to get around our body's defenses, even after previous infection or being vaccinated. This is especially true with BA.5, an omicron subvariant that is the dominant version throughout the United States. BA.5 has evolved so much since the original strain that our current immunity is not well aligned to fight it as well as before.

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It's important to note that your body will still fight the virus, eventually. But it's like it gets a late start since omicron gets around immunity so well.

The new lab study out of UW Medicine shows that vaccine boosters stopped severe Covid infection. Basically, boosters brought up antibody levels enough that, while a person could still get sick, they weren't aren't as likely to come down with a severe case.

Researchers used blood samples of people who had been infected and who had been vaccinated, and boosted. They put those samples up against the current variant. They used seven vaccines that are available around the world, including the options used in the United States.

Researchers also found that the omicron BA.5 subvariant is about six times stronger in its ability to infect cells, which would explain why it is far more contagious than previous versions. Previous infection did not stand up well against it. Vaccinated, but not boosted, did better. And vaccinated plus boosted samples offered strong protection against severe disease.

According to UW Medicine: “The marked improvement in plasma neutralizing activity for subjects that received a booster dose over those that did not highlights the importance of vaccine boosters for eliciting potent neutralizing antibody responses against omicron sublineages.”

Or, putting it plainly, boosters offer a great defense against these new troublesome variants.