Emerging microbes & infections
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Emerg Microbes Infect · Dec 2022
The significant immune escape of pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron.
The emergence of Omicron/BA.1 has brought new challenges to fight against SARS-CoV-2. A large number of mutations in the Spike protein suggest that its susceptibility to immune protection elicited by the existing COVID-19 infection and vaccines may be altered. ⋯ Our results indicated that the mean neutralization ED50 of these sera against Omicron decreased to 66, which is about 8.4-folds compared to the D614G reference strain (ED50 = 556), whereas the neutralization activity of other VOC and VOI pseudotyped viruses decreased only about 1.2-4.5-folds. The finding from our in vitro assay suggest that Omicron variant may lead to more significant escape from immune protection elicited by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and perhaps even by existing COVID-19 vaccines.