London, Europe Brief News – A new study has reveled that “natural immunity” reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death by 88 percent for about 10 months.
The study published in The Lancet medical journal found that the natural immunity is “at least as durable, if not more so” than two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines.
“Our findings show that immunity from COVID-19 infection confers substantial protection against infection from pre-Omicron variants,” the authors noted.
But the report also found that protection gained from an earlier infection may erode more quickly when faced with newer coronavirus variants like Omicron.
“The studies that are available on Omicron suggest that past infection is very good at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation, but both vaccination and infection do not give as much immunity stopping you from getting sick. That’s the notion of immune-escape,” Chris Murray, co-author of the report said.
“Omicron has been able to evade past immunity and infect you, but fortunately not necessarily cause severe disease and death,” said Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
The researchers reviewed 65 studies from 19 countries up to September 2022, meaning some covered the period when Omicron swept across the world.
According to the authors, protection from past infection was “very high” against reinfection from pre-Omicron variants and “remained high even after 40 weeks”.
