Third dose of Covid-19 vaccine May be Needed
Two Singapore residents have caught the omicron variant even after receiving Covid-19 booster shots, in case raising question on the protection offered by a third dose of vaccine.
The health ministry said on Thursday, A 24-year-old female airport passenger-service worker has returned a positive test to omicron, in what would be the city-state's first local case of the variant.
On December 6, the second person is considered an imported case after returning from Germany by the vaccinated travel lane. Both had received a third dose of vaccines, the ministry said.
Earlier this week, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said initial lab studies show a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine may be needed to reduce the effect of the omicron variant. Company researchers observed a 25-fold reduction in neutralizing antibodies that fight the variant, after comparing with the original strain of the virus, in people who got two shots initially.
Singapore's health ministry said, "Given its high transmissibility and spread to many parts of the world, we should expect to find more omicron cases at our borders and also within our community."
According to the latest statement, both people are recovering in isolation at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, and all close contacts are quarantined for 10 days.
As a part of weekly testing the airport worker had been tested for frontline border workers.
According to the statement, she was asymptomatic when detected through the testing. While in the second case, the 46-year-old had tested negative with a polymerase chain reaction test.
Singapore has seen a sharp drop in community cases over the past month, along with a significant easing in hospital loads. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, The city-state has one of the world's best vaccination rates.
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