Protection against SARS-CoV-2 BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants via vaccination and natural infection: A modeling study


With continuing emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, understanding the proportion of the population protected against infection is crucial for public health risk assessment and decision-making and so that the general public can take preventive measures. We aimed to estimate the protection against symptomatic illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5 elicited by vaccination against and natural infection with other SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants. We used a logistic model to define the protection rate against symptomatic infection caused by BA.1 and BA.2 as a function of neutralizing antibody titer values. Applying the quantified relationships to BA.4 and BA.5 using two different methods, the estimated protection rate against BA.4 and BA.5 was 11.3% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.01–25.4) (method 1) and 12.9% (95% CI: 8.8–18.0) (method 2) at 6 months after a second dose of BNT162b2 vaccine, 44.3% (95% CI: 20.0–59.3) (method 1) and 47.3% (95% CI: 34.1–60.6) (method 2) at 2 weeks after a third BNT162b2 dose, and 52.3% (95% CI: 25.1–69.2) (method 1) and 54.9% (95% CI: 37.6–71.4) (method 2) during the convalescent phase after infection with BA.1 and BA.2, respectively. Our study indicates that the protection rate against BA.4 and BA.5 are significantly lower compared with those against previous variants and may lead to substantial morbidity, and overall estimates were consistent with empirical reports. Our simple yet practical models enable prompt assessment of public health impacts posed by new SARS-CoV-2 variants using small sample-size neutralization titer data to support public health decisions in urgent situations.
