And while we’ve made good progress, we know we have more work to do. CDC is working in close partnership with states, localities, and providers across the country to expand access to boosters and to ensure that every state has access to the resources and support they need to protect those at highest risk, including residents of long-term care facilities.
This includes CDC’s proactive assistance to long-term care facilities that need help by matching them with a retail pharmacy through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program to provide an on-site clinic. Thousands of facilities have already been matched through CDC or by requesting support through their state health department.
Given the data presented today, we urge participation of both residents and staff in our booster program.
And we are collectively working closely with states at all levels, including weekly calls with governors, state health official — officers, and immunization programs.
Just yesterday, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. And now we have over 200 million Americans fully vaccinated and more than 55 million boosted.
In this moment, as we continue to learn more and are guided by the evolving science, it’s important to remember that we have far more tools to fight this virus than we ever did just one year ago.
Thank you. And I’ll now turn things over to Dr. Fauci.
DR. FAUCI: Thank you very much, Dr. Walensky. I’d like to now spend a few minutes talking about the Omicron variant in the light of the effect of boosters — if I could have the first slide.
Clearly, because — first slide please — clearly because we have an intense interest on the evolving scenario with Omicron, a number of studies have been done throughout the country and the world to take a look at how we might prepare in the context of vaccinations. And I’ll divide it up into two components.
Next slide.
The first is to look at selected in vitro neutralization studies, namely the capability of vaccine-induced antibodies to neutralize the new Omicron variant.
Next slide.
This is data from Pfizer BioNTech. If you look on the left-hand part of the slide, this is 21 days after the second dose of the Pfizer product.
Note the purple bar in the middle on the left, which is Omicron — clearly a substantial diminution in the pseudo virus neutralization titer, which is measured on the vertical axis.
On the right-hand part of the slide, one month after the third dose, take a look now again at the purple bar, which has gone up substantially from the 6, which is circled on the left, to 154. Again, this is one of a number of representative studies.
Next slide.
Another study from the Rockefeller University in New York, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, again, showing that Omicron exhibits a rather profound degree of neutralization escape looking at the low levels of the blue triangles on the left part of the panel.
However, the two-dose mRNA vaccinated people who received a booster dose — look — had a substantial increase in neutralizing activity to the tune of a 38-fold increase.
Next slide.
And most recent data from our own Vaccine Research Center, which is the first in a series of data that will be coming out over the next few days and be published in a preprint server next week, this is a sampling of the data.
Again, two weeks post-dose, look at the Omicron ID50 neutralizing activity: substantially low. Look at the three dots that are even below the level of detection.
However, if you look at two weeks post the third dose, note the substantial degree of elevation of the neutralizing titer well within the range of neutralizing Omicron.
Next slide.
Now we look at selected clinical studies.
Next slide.
As is shown here, this is not looking at booster, it’s looking at the effectiveness of a two-dose Pfizer vaccine against the Omicron variant.
On the left-hand part, as has been reported in multiple other studies, the effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection is about 33 percent, down from 80 percent to the pre-Omicron era.
But note, on the right-hand part of the slide, that the effectiveness against hospitalization, which is critical, still maintains a 70 percent effectiveness.
Obviously, this is significantly down, but there is the maintaining of a degree of protection against hospitalization.
Next slide.
Now, if you look at the UK Data, if you look at the Delta in the blue boxes, you see that effectiveness is significantly lower when you look at the time since the vaccine was given, measured in weeks.
However, when you get the booster, which is in the red circles, for Omicron, it increases to 75 percent effectiveness against symptomatic disease with a booster dose.
So what is all of this telling us very clearly and very emphatically?
Last slide.
The Omicron variant undoubtedly compromises the effects of a two-dose mRNA vaccine-induced antibodies and reduces the overall protection. However, as I showed on a prior slide, considerable protection still maintains against severe disease.
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