People infected with earlier variants of COVID do not appear to be protected against Omicron, although vaccination will still prevent serious illness, a top South African scientist said on Thursday.
“We believe that previous infection does not provide protection from Omicron,” said Anne von Gottberg, an expert at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
Outlining early research into the newly-emerged variant, she said doctors were seeing “an increase for Omicron reinfections”.
This trend was also seen in models which projected those cases against the overall population, she said in a news conference with the World Health Organization’s Africa region.
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