Search results
Jan 20, 2022 · Natural immunity vs. vaccine-induced immunity to COVID-19. January 20, 2022. By Sandy Cohen. 2 min read. Update: A study published Feb. 3 in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that natural antibodies from COVID-19 infection may last as long as 20 months. Experts caution, however, that these antibodies may not provide immunity ...
Apr 20, 2022 · "This data is key to helping us understand the strength and longevity of natural immunity and allows us to compare the effectiveness of a prior infection with mRNA vaccines," said Amy Compton ...
- Overview
- Does infection-acquired immunity outperform vaccines?
- When should I get a Covid booster?
Immunity acquired from a Covid infection provides strong, lasting protection against the most severe outcomes of the illness, according to research published Thursday in The Lancet — protection, experts say, that’s on par with what’s provided through two doses of an mRNA vaccine.
Infection-acquired immunity cut the risk of hospitalization and death from a Covid reinfection by 88% for at least 10 months, the study found.
“This is really good news, in the sense that protection against severe disease and death after infection is really quite sustained at 10 months,” said the senior study author, Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
The findings may be a small silver lining to the explosive omicron outbreak of last winter. With so many people infected, many most likely still benefit from that protection against severe disease, Murray said.
Still, experts stress that vaccination is the preferable route to immunity, given the risks of Covid, particularly in unvaccinated people.
“The problem of saying ‘I’m gonna get infected to get immunity’ is you might be one of those people that end up in the hospital or die,” Murray said. “Why would you take the risk when you can get immunity through vaccination quite safely?”
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the authors wrote.
While Murray and Wachter agreed that vaccination remains the safest route, having a past Covid infection should at least be considered in policymaking decisions going forward, such as vaccination requirements, they said.
“What Europe did with this evidence made a lot of sense, which is where evidence of past infection was seen as essentially equal to vaccination in terms of requirements to go into events or for employment,” Murray said.
At the very least, he added, officials should accept that evidence of recent infection is equivalent to vaccination.
Notably, the immunity acquired from infection did appear to wane more slowly than the immunity from two doses of an mRNA vaccine.
However, Murray said a booster dose would return protection to a higher level.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends waiting three months after an infection to get a booster dose.
It may be reasonable for people with healthy immune systems to stretch that out a little bit more, to six months, as the immune response continues to develop, said Deepta Bhattacharya, a professor of immunobiology at the University of Arizona.
“We know that the immune response continues to mature over the course of about six months, both for vaccines and for infections,” he said. “Waiting about six months gives you the best bang for your buck.”
Wachter said that while it’s not harmful to get a booster earlier, there is some flexibility with the timing for people who recently had Covid.
“If you are thinking about getting a booster, it’s a perfectly reasonable call to look at this and say I’ll wait six or eight months before getting my booster,” Wachter said. “That’s a reasonable conclusion from looking at the study.”
Follow NBC HEALTH on Twitter & Facebook.
Jun 21, 2021 · While natural immunity tends to last longer than vaccine immunity, experts say it depends on the pathogen. Vaccines for HPV, tetanus and pneumococcal provide stronger immunity than the disease itself.
Jan 24, 2022 · These include long-lived cells that carry a memory of the pathogen and offer better protection against future infections. However, because the coronavirus is a new virus, scientists are unsure how ...
- Eileen Bailey
May 28, 2021 · Immunity from natural infection starts to decline after 6 to 8 months. We know that fully vaccinated people still have good immunity after a year—and probably longer. Why is it that the vaccine leads to better immunity than natural infection? The honest truth is, we don’t know.
Jan 9, 2023 · Randomised placebo-controlled trials showed that the initial efficacy of vaccines in preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection ranges from 66 to 95% [ 1 – 9 ]. However, this high efficacy wanes over time, resulting in substantive reductions in vaccine protection [ 10, 11 ]. Similarly, while prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 can provide a high ...
