Star News by Susan Berry, PhD | Jul 15, 2022
Study: Natural Immunity Is 97 Percent Effective Against Severe COVID After 14 Months
A study has found that natural immunity following COVID infection provides protection against severe illness that is superior to that imparted by the COVID vaccines.
In a preprint article published at MedRxiv, Qatar researchers revealed they found people who survived COVID-19 infection, and were not vaccinated, had outstanding protection against severe COVID disease or death from COVID.
“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3% … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning,” the researchers noted. “Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age.”
The study, which was conducted on the total population of Qatar, set out to answer three questions:
• 1) When infected with a pre-Omicron variant, how long does protection persist against reinfection with pre-Omicron variants?
• 2) When infected with a pre-Omicron variant, how long does protection persist against reinfection with an Omicron subvariant?
• 3) When infected with any variant, how long does protection persist against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19?
“Despite waning protection against reinfection, strikingly, there was no evidence for waning of protection against severe COVID-19 at reinfection,” the researchers found. “This remained ∼100%, even 14 months after the primary infection, with no appreciable effect for Omicron immune evasion in reducing it.”
More:
https://thestarnewsnetwork.com/2022/07/15/study-natural-immunity-is-97-percent-effective-against-severe-covid-after-14-months/
