Omicron, the new variant of COVID-19 is likely to hit Idaho, Wyoming, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana the hardest in coming weeks, as they have the lowest vaccination rates in the United States.

While there are other factors to take into consideration, such as mask-wearing, social distancing and federal government policy towards the pandemic, vaccinations are the main protecting factor against getting the omicron variant and becoming severely ill from it.

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According to data shared by the New York Times, as of December 22, Idaho, Wyoming, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are the least vaccinated states in the United States.

Idaho has only 46 percent of its population fully vaccinated, while Wyoming and Alabama each have 47 percent of their population fully vaccinated.

Mississippi and Louisiana follow with 48 and 50 percent of their populations fully vaccinated respectively.

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The data suggests that vaccines are around 30 to 40 percent effective at preventing infection and 70 percent effective at preventing severe disease from the highly-mutated new COVID variant.

Although this data suggests that current vaccines are less effective against the omicron variant than the Delta variant, there are promising signs that boosters provide extra protection.

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On Monday, Moderna announced that its boosters showed a significant increase in neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron in preliminary lab trials. Pfizer and BioNTech on December 8, achieved similar results, saying that a booster of its vaccine increases the antibody titers by 25-fold. However, the companies did not release any data.