While it's true you can naturally acquire immunity against an offending invader like a bacteria or virus, experts say natural immunity provides less protection against the new variants than the vaccine. New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows if you've been infected before, you're highly likely to be infected again.
"Antibodies elicited by infection do not neutralize the currently circulating coronavirus variants as efficiently as antibodies elicited by mRNA vaccination,"
Scott Hensley, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania,
previously told USA TODAY.
A
June 30 study published in Science Translational Medicine found antibodies produced by those fully vaccinated with Moderna's mRNA vaccine were more broadly protective against different variants, compared to antibodies of recovered COVID-19 patients.
Vaccines also provide much more consistent protection from infection than natural immunity, said Grant McFadden, director of the Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy at Arizona State University.
"Recovery from COVID results in very variable immunity to a second infection, and this is reflected in the wide range of anti-spike antibodies in recovered patients," McFadden told USA TODAY. "On the other hand, the immunity from the vaccines (especially the messenger RNA versions) is much more uniform, both in terms of protection from COVID and in anti-spike antibody levels."
A University of Oxford study
published in June found that people with weaker immune responses from a previous COVID-19 infection could be at a higher risk of contracting new viral variants.
Vaccines also induce the body to produce antibodies at levels even higher than those who have recovered from COVID-19,
Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, assistant professor of pediatrics specializing in infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine,
told Health.
"The vaccine elicits many more antibodies than a natural infection, so as the vaccine declines, the protection lasts longer than it would from a natural infection," she said.
The CDC study released on Aug. 6 found the unvaccinated were 2.34 times more likely to get reinfected compared to the fully vaccinated, among Kentucky residents infected with COVID-19 in 2020 and watched during the study period of May to June 2021.
Research
published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal also found a high recurrence rate when examining COVID-19 reinfections among young, healthy U.S. Marines. Out of the 189 Marine recruits who were infected with the virus between May and November 2020, the April study found 10% tested positive again.
A Facebook post falsely claims you don't need to get vaccinated if you've had COVID-19 in the past.
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