KONTAN.CO.ID – JAKARTA. When a person is infected with Covid-19, he or she should have immunity against the corona virus. However, health experts do not know how long this immunity lasts.
Launch Medical News Today, scientists know that some people have been infected with Covid-19 more than once. However, there is not enough data for scientists to be able to analyze how long this natural immunity lasts.
After studying the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the researchers suggested that, among unvaccinated people, reinfection could occur as soon as 3 months after contracting the virus.
According to Our World in Data, nearly half of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Scientists have shown that the Covid-19 vaccine reduces the severity of the disease but does not provide full protection against Covid-19.
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At the start of the pandemic, several jurisdictions, including those in the United Kingdom and Sweden, implemented herd immunity policies, which assumed that allowing enough people to catch the virus would provide the population with sufficient immunity to end the pandemic.
Although there have been some reports of people being infected with Covid-19 more than once, this number is too small to carry out epidemiological studies.
This means it is difficult to determine how long the conferred immunity from SARS-CoV-2 infection lasts.
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In this study, the researchers have performed an analysis of previously published data on a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2. They set out to determine how long immunity after Covid-19 infection could last.
The study, conducted at The Lancet Microbe, shows that unvaccinated people can expect immunity to reinfection to last 3–61 months after becoming infected with Covid-19 if the virus is still spreading in the community.
The study could help encourage people to get vaccinated, said Dr. Ajay Sethi, professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study.
“This study underscores the importance for the public to understand that immunity from natural infection is not as long-lasting as some people may feel, and certainly not for life,” he explained. Medical News Today.
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He also explained that studies have shown that vaccination after natural infection produces a stronger immune response compared to vaccination without a previous history of Covid-19.
“Hopefully, more people who have been infected in the past will choose to be vaccinated,” Sethi added.
Editor: Barratut Taqiyyah Rafie
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