Fig. 1. SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses in vaccinated HCWs 10 months after previous vaccinations. Each individual data point represents one previously infected (n=26), recently infected (n=12), or infection-naive (n=13) HCW. T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2(A) spike S1 and (B) nucleocapsid protein.(C) Total serum anti-SARS-CoV-2 RBD (ancestral strain) IgG concentrations. (D) Serum antibody neutralizing activity against Omicron BA.5 spike RBD presented as percentage inhibition. Data are represented as median with IQR and were assessed by a Kruskal-Wallis test with Dunn’s post-hoc analysis.
The effect of a bivalent ancestral/Omicron BA.1 COVID-19 booster mRNA vaccination on SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses
After pooling the previously infected, recently infected and infection-naive HCWs, 18 HCWs received a COVID-19 bivalent booster mRNA vaccination, i.e., Comirnaty Original/Omicron BA.1 (n=13) or Spikevax bivalent Original/Omicron BA.1 (n=5), in between T1 and T2. Accordingly, we determined the effect of a bivalent booster vaccination, which contains spike-encoding mRNA of both the SARS-CoV-2 ancestral strain and Omicron BA.1, on T cell and antibody responses. We observed a considerable increase in S1-specific T cell responses (p = 0.0004), anti-RBD (ancestral) IgG antibodies (p = 0.0090), and Omicron BA.5 serum neutralization activity (p = 0.0023) after bivalent booster vaccination(Fig. 2A-C) . Furthermore, we also assessed the immune responses of 8 HCWs who were not vaccinated in between the two timepoints with an interval of 70 (69.5-75.5) days. These HCWs showed comparable immune responses at both timepoints (Fig. 2D-F) .