According to the researchers and Meta – Analysis published in The Lancet based on 65 studies from 19 countries, covid virus impacted the patients to emerge with natural immunity.
The patients who have already been infected with COVID-19 have 88% less chances of being hospitalized or any kind of severe illness, for at least 10 months. They also said that such researches should not demoralize the vaccinations as it is still considered the safest and long-lasting mode of gaining immunity.
Dr Stephen Lim the lead author from the (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine says “Vaccination is the safest way to acquire immunity, whereas acquiring natural immunity must be weighed against the risks of severe illness and death associated with the initial infection.
The protection against reinfection, severe illness and symptomatic disease was 82% due the two doses of MRNA vaccines namely, Pfizer- BioNTech and Moderna in case of Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omnicron BA.1 and ancestral. They haven’t included the statistics on Omnicron XBB and their genealogy for example BA.2 and BA.4/BA. This study showed significant reduction in protection during the pre-Omicron variant. But it was observed that the protection was maintained at a high-level during the Omnicron variant.
Dr. Chris Murray the director says, “There’s quite a long-sustained protection against severe disease and death, almost 90% at 10 months. It is much better than I had expected, and that’s a good thing for the world, right? Given that most of the world has had omicron. It means there’s an awful lot of immunity out there.”
Murray also added, “What we all worry about is a new variant that has immune escape like omicron had on the prior variants. People like to hope the evolution of the virus will lead to less severe forms, but that’s not a guarantee. So, we just need to stay vigilant for the possibility of a different variant.”
According to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US there is still 40,000 new Covid-Cases per day.
Co-author of IHME, Dr Caroline Stein says, “Vaccines continue to be important for everyone in order to protect high-risk populations such as those who are over 60 years of age and those with comorbidities.”
Protection from Covid-19 will not last forever, on the contrary in case of chickenpox, measles or Polio vaccination against them have proven to be long lasting. In spite of People having natural immunity, still they will have to take Covid – 19 boosters from time to time not more than once in a year thinks Dr. Murray.
As per CDC and the data recovered by 8th February only 69% of total US population has got their 1st shot of vaccination and only 16% of the citizens have got their 2nd shot. Without both the doses, the patient may be prone to risk of severe health ailments or death especially people having previous health issues. The researchers also say that patients may carry the symptoms of Long Covid, where in the patient will have the illness for a prolonged period. Severe the illness, higher is the chances of getting Long Covid.
Dr Claudia Hoyen, an infectious disease specialist and director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland has observed that COVID-19 isn’t going to go away unlike the other viruses, instead it will continue in near future while evolving itself as new variant every time. “We never know what we’re setting people up for by going out and getting a disease. It’s always safer to get vaccinated than get sick.”
An expert member of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) task force on
COVID-19, Dr Sanjay Pujari, expresses as “While considering natural infection as almost equivalent to two doses of high-quality vaccines, the translational value of this evidence is challenging. Protection afforded by hybrid immunity may be more robust and the dynamics of its waning may be different from natural or vaccine-induced immunity.” He also added, ”Segregating people at population levels by determining past infection history and its timing complicates the vaccine programmed as timing of booster doses may need to be individualized”.
Also, an expert virologist, Dr Gagandeep Kang, specifies in his comment as, “age structure of the population, the kind of vaccines used, history of infection and by which variant need to be considered to determine the duration of protection.”
