This one thing can significantly strengthen your protection against Omikron, health department with important notice!

Omicron is the topic in the Corona world right now! Now the health department says: This one thing can significantly strengthen your protection against Omikron!

Experts stress the importance of this protective measure against the new COVID variant.

In just two weeks, the Omikron variant has become one of the main focal points of the COVID pandemic. This new variant of the coronavirus has been detected in more than 50 countries so far, including the United States, and has become a major concern for virus experts. Omikron features more mutations of the spike protein than any other version of the virus before and has the potential to undermine existing vaccines that target this protein. However, as the virus continues to spread, public health officials have already identified what protective measures might be useful against this variant.

On Dec. 9, health officials decided to again recommend expanding booster vaccination in the U.S. so that 16- and 17-year-olds can now receive an additional shot of the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine. According to the agency, this was done as a precaution against the new variant.

“Although we do not yet have all the answers for the Omicron variant, early data suggest that COVID-19 booster vaccinations extend and strengthen protection against Omicron and other variants,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said in a statement.

The CDC’s recommendation came just hours after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extended Biontech/Pfizer’s emergency approval for booster vaccination to everyone 16 years of age and older. In a statement, FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, said that vaccination and booster vaccination, when eligible, are “currently among the most effective methods to combat COVID-19.

“As people gather indoors with family and friends over the holidays, we must not let up on all the preventive public health measures we took during the pandemic,” Woodcock continued. “As both the delta and omicron variants continue to spread, vaccination remains the best protection against COVID-19.”

A day before the CDC and FDA decided to expand eligibility for booster shots, Pfizer and BioNTech released an update on how their vaccine is responding to the new variant. According to the companies’ Dec. 8 announcement, preliminary laboratory data showed that blood samples from patients who had received only two vaccinations showed a 25-fold decrease in antibodies, which “may not be sufficient to protect against infection with Omicron.” However, antibody levels in samples from patients who had received three vaccinations were similar to antibody levels measured with two vaccinations against earlier variants.

“To make it clear for your audience, three doses against Omicron is almost equivalent to the efficacy of [two] doses we had against … the original variant,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said during a Dec. 8 interview on NBC’s Today.

However, some health officials have been hesitant to endorse additional COVID vaccine doses for younger adults. That’s because younger people, particularly teenage males and young adolescents, have a somewhat increased risk of developing heart muscle inflammation, known as myocarditis, after more than one dose of an mRNA COVID vaccine.

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In a statement, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said Pfizer’s initial two-dose vaccine series for people 16 and older has now been available for nearly a year and that the benefits far outweigh the potential risks, including the low possibility of myocarditis.

“Since the vaccine was first licensed, there is new evidence that the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine declines after the second dose of vaccine in all adults and in 16- and 17-year-olds. A single booster dose of the vaccine for those vaccinated at least six months earlier will help maintain protection against COVID-19 in this and older age groups,” Marks said.