December 21, 2021
t’s been only three weeks since omicron hit the news, but the variant is already the country’s dominant Covid strain, responsible for 73% of U.S. cases — including more than 250,000 cases just over the last day, according to Johns Hopkins University.
But there’s a way to help protect yourself against symptomatic and severe illness: booster shots.
Most recently, Moderna announced on Monday that its Covid vaccine boosters showed a significant increase in antibody levels against omicron in preliminary lab trials. Pfizer announced similar results earlier this month, offering additional hope ahead of the winter holidays that the mRNA boosters provide protection against the omicron variant.
Emerging real world data has also shown that boosters can protect against symptomatic and severe disease. But while 204 million Americans are fully vaccinated — 62% of the U.S. population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — only 30% of those fully vaccinated people have gotten a booster shot, as of Tuesday.
Read more at CNBC.