Hybrid Immunity Provides the Best Protection to Avoid Covid-19

PARIS, KOMPAS.com – The results of two recent studies said on Friday (1/4/2022), people with “hybrid immunity“who have been fully vaccinated and previously infected Covid-19 has the strongest protection against the corona virus.

After two years of a pandemic that has left nearly 500 million people infected and billions vaccinated, the study highlights the importance of being vaccinated for those who have natural immunity after recovering from illness.

One of two studies published in medical journals The Lancet Infectious Diseases analyzed the health data of more than 200,000 people in 2020 and 2021 in severely affected Brazil, which has the second-largest Covid-19 death toll in the world.

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It was found that for people who already had the Covid-19 vaccine Pfizer and AstraZeneca offer 90 percent effectiveness against hospitalization and death, CoronaVac China has 81 percent, and Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot Covid-19 vaccine has 58 percent.

“These four vaccines have been shown to provide significant extra protection for those with previous Covid-19 infection,” said study author Julio Croda of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul. AFP.

“Hybrid immunity as exposure to natural infections and vaccination is likely to become the norm globally and may provide long-term protection even against emerging variants,” said Pramod Kumar Garg of the Indian Institute of Health Science and Technology Translation in a commentary related to the study.

A study using Sweden’s national register through October 2021 meanwhile found that people who recovered from Covid-19 maintained a high level of protection against reinfection for up to 20 months.

Meanwhile, people with two-dose hybrid immunity had a 66 percent lower risk of reinfection than those with only natural immunity.

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Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia who was not involved in the study, said that 20 months of excellent protection from natural immunity was much better than expected from the original two doses of the vaccine.

However, he cautioned that both studies were completed before the Omicron variant of Covid-19 became dominant worldwide, and that it particularly lowered the value of protection from previous infections.

A Qatari study published on the pre-publication website medRxiv last week provided insight into the protection offered by hybrid immunity against Omicron.

It found that three doses of the vaccine were 52 percent effective against symptomatic infection of the Omicron BA.2 subvariance, but that number jumped to 77 percent when the patient had been previously infected.

The study, which has not been reviewed by other investigators, found that hybrid immunity resulting from previous infection and recent booster vaccination provided the strongest protection against the BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants.

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