Pfizer Board Member: Immunity From Omicron Likely Protective Against Sub-Variant

Scott Gottlieb testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 5, 2017. Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb said that the Omicron COVID-19 variant appears to confer some protection against an Omicron sub-variant known as BA.2 that was recently discovered in several countries.

“You should be protected. So the mutations in this new version are not in the receptor-binding domain on the spike protein,” Gottlieb told CBS News on Sunday morning. “That’s the portion of the spike protein that we develop our best antibodies against that neutralize the virus. Most of the mutations are in a separate part of the spike protein called the N-terminal domain.”

Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, added that someone who has contracted the Omicron variant should be “[protected] against subsequent infection from this new variant. That’s why I don’t think this is going to create a huge wave of infection.”

BA.2, a new version of the virus, is a descendant of the Omicron variant, according to officials in several countries.

“The BA. 2 descendant lineage, which differs from BA. 1 in some of the mutations, including in the spike protein, is increasing in many countries,” the WHO said recently on its website. “Investigations into the characteristics of BA. 2, including immune escape properties and virulence, should be prioritized independently (and comparatively) to BA. 1.”

People queue to collect coronavirus disease (COVID-19) antigen test kits at the Hazeldean Mall in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on January 7, 2022. Patrick Doyle/Reuters

But Kristen Nordlund, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokeswoman, told The Washington Post that “currently, there are insufficient data to determine whether the BA.2 lineage is more transmissible or has a fitness advantage over the BA.1 lineage [omicron].”

She added: “Although the BA.2 lineage has recently increased in proportion in some countries, it remains a very low proportion of circulating viruses in the United States and globally.”

In Denmark, where about 80 percent of the country is vaccinated, BA.2 has displaced the original Omicron variant, known as BA.1, Troels Lillebaek, the chairman of the country’s committee investigating COVID-19 variants, told CNBC last week.

More than 211 million Americans, or 63 percent of the total population, are fully vaccinated. About 86 million people have gotten a booster dose. Vaccinations peaked last spring at more than 3 million per day, and now average less than 750,000 per day. The pace of vaccinations briefly spiked following news of the Omicron variant in December but has since slowed again.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.