What Imperial research taught us about COVID-19 in 2022

From increased understanding of immunity to analysing the success of vaccines, we look back at what Imperial taught us about COVID-19 in 2022. Omicron infection doesn’t boost immunity much A study published in March in the journal Science found that in triple-vaccinated people infected for the first time, Omicron infection boosted immunity against previous variants (such as alpha, delta, and the original strain) but less so against Omicron. There was no boost at all in people who had previously been infected with a different variant. The Imperial team behind the paper attributed this to an effect called ‘hybrid immune damping’. This study helped explain why so many triple-vaccinated people were infected or re-infected when Omicron was prevalent earlier in the year. But T cells from the common cold provide some cross-protection A study led by Imperial researchers and published in January in Nature Communications found that T cells from the common cold provide some...