“The world population is well protected against COVID19 both after being infected with the coronavirus and after being vaccinated against the disease,” concluded a scientific study published on Friday (17).
Research suggests that the level and duration of protection against reinfection, symptomatic illness and serious illness are at least comparable to those offered by two doses of mRNA vaccines such as B. those of Moderna and PfizerBioNtech in the case of Alpha, Delta and Omikron.
“Vaccination is the surest way to gain immunity. Acquiring natural immunity must be balanced against the risks of serious illness and death associated with initial infection,” lead author Stephen Lim, a researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in a statement to The Lancet.
The protection of the natural immunity against reinfection is about 85% in ten months for Alpha and Delta variants, with Omicron BA.1 this protection drops to 36% after this time. However, after ten months, the protection from hospitalization and death is 90% for the Alpha and Delta variants and 88% in the case of Omicron BA.1, according to the analysis of 65 different studies conducted in 19 countries.
The weaker protection in the case of the Omicron variant and its subvariants “reflects mutations that allowed them to evade immunity more easily than other variants,” said Hasan Nasserldine, coauthor of the study.
The study was published by the British weekly journal The Lancet, which specializes in international medicine, and had an unprecedented impact due to the magnitude of its conclusions. About 60 preexisting investigations are compiled, “with a setback of several years and taking into account the appearance of the Ómicron variant at the end of 2021”.
The thesis was based on comparing the most effective vaccines against Covid19, which are the mainstays of vaccination campaigns in many western countries, although the topic is not new and many other studies have tried to compare the risks of being infected with the virus again, ever depending on whether the person is vaccinated or has already been infected.
In this sense, the Ómicron variant proved to be much more contagious than its predecessors and capable of infecting countless vaccinated people without running a high risk of contracting a severe form of the disease.
The study concludes that this also applies to previous coronavirus infections. Protection against reinfection with the Omicron variant is fairly weak, but strong against a more severe form, comparing postvaccination antibodies to those acquired through infection. These results do not mean that it is irrelevant to be vaccinated or infected in order to acquire initial immunity afterwards. From now on it is becoming much more risky due to its consequences, especially for the elderly.
However, this study, published in The Lancet, offers a closer look at what to expect from the development of ‘hybrid immunity’ in the population as many more people have been vaccinated and infected with the virus at least once. . Findings suggest future Covid waves will lead to low hospital admissions, medical study concludes.
Although it has long been talked about and there are studies trying to compare the risks of contracting the virus again depending on whether someone is vaccinated or already infected, this work by The Lancet is of unprecedented magnitude. “Although infection provides protection that decreases over time, its level appears to last as long or even longer than that conferred by vaccination itself,” the published study concluded.