A King's College study has shown that Brits who had a booster jab recovered from Omicron almost twice as quickly as those who were not vaccinated against Covid-19 for a third time. The research analysed 62,000 vaccinated people with those who received a third jab experiencing symptoms of the variant for an average of 4.4 days compared to 8.3 days for those without a third jab, as reported in the Daily Star.
Published in The Lancet, the study also found that triple-vaccinated people displayed symptoms of the variant Delta for an average of 7.7 days compared to 9.6 days for those who had only been jabbed twice. Omicron patients, meanwhile, were 25% less likely to be hospitalised than Delta patients with respective rates of one in 50 people and one in 38.
Professor Ana Valdes, an honorary professor at King’s College London, said: “Although there is still a wide range of duration and severity of symptoms with Omicron, for vaccinated individuals we find on average a shorter duration of symptoms. This suggests that the incubation time and period of infectiousness for Omicron may also be shorter.”
The study also noted a difference in symptoms between the two variants with only 17% of those analysed with Omicron losing their sense of smell, compared to 53% with Delta. Dr Cristina Menni, from King’s College, said: “We observe a different clinical presentation of symptoms in those infected with Omicron compared to Delta.
“As we are moving even further away from the average patient having UK government ‘core’ symptoms - for example, fever, persistent cough, loss of smell - our results point to a different selection of symptoms that may indicate infection. To protect others, it is still important to self-isolate for five days as soon as you see any symptoms.”
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