R&I – FS
When Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke recently at a White House briefing about the need for COVID-19 booster shots, buried in his slideshow of charts and data points was a little-noticed scientific paper that offers evidence for a reliable way to predict how much protection a COVID-19 vaccine offers.
The study appeared on a preprint server earlier this month without much fanfare, but many interested in the future of COVID-19 vaccines had been eagerly awaiting the results.
The researchers were looking for markers in vaccinated patients’ blood that would indicate protection against COVID-19, what’s known as “correlates of immunity.” What the team of scientists found were neutralizing antibodies — proteins made by the immune system that are known to disarm the coronavirus.
As Fauci explained, the paper showed that higher levels of these antibodies are associated with higher levels of vaccine efficacy. The findings suggest that giving people a booster vaccine, which has been shown to raise antibody levels, would go a long way toward protecting them against the coronavirus, including some of the newer and more dangerous variants.
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