JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) — A laboratory research has suggested that the Omicron variant can partially escape antibody immunity induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The research, led by professor Alex Sigal from the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa, has been submitted to medRxiv, a preprint server for health sciences.

The research confirms predictions that the large number of mutations in the spike protein and elsewhere on the Omicron variant would translate into some evasion of the immune response induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Sigal said on Twitter Tuesday that his lab tested blood from 12 people who had been vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and found that there was a 41-fold decrease in the ability of antibodies from the vaccine to neutralize the Omicron variant.

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