A fourth Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine shot provides short-lived protection against the infection of the virus, and can’t afford the predicted protection against severe illness, a new study showed.
Published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study examined the health records of more than 1.25 million persons who were vaccinated with the fourth Coronavirus vaccine between January and March who are over 60. Those two months marked the climax of the Omicron variant.
After examining the data, the experts identified that the levels of COVID-19 infections in the fourth week after the fourth dose were lower than in people who received only three doses by a factor of 3.5.
Furthermore, the protection against the severe illness didn’t seem to be effective six weeks after the fourth shot.