Omicron variant infections protect for “at least” 10 months against serious complications of COVID-19, according to a large scientific study. In other words, you can breathe easy almost a year after an infection.
This is the conclusion of a team of researchers who combed through 65 peer-reviewed studies from 19 countries. According to their meta-study, the risk of suffering a serious illness again ten months after the initial illness drops by 88.9%.
The risk of reinfection altogether remains relatively high. Someone who has been hit with Omicron has a 45.3% chance of getting sick again from contact with the virus after 10 months.
Scientists cannot extrapolate in the longer term because of the lack of time perspective. “Few data are available beyond a period of 40 weeks after the initial infection”, we note.
Cases of serious symptoms in people who have had the infection, there will be almost no more.
“Cases of serious symptoms in people who have had the infection, there will be almost no more”, confirms to the Duty Louis Flamand, director of the Department of microbiology-infectiology and immunology at Université Laval. “Immunological memory is going to be there in the future. […] It becomes bouts of cold or flu symptoms that don’t really do any harm. We can think that it becomes a bit like that. »
The meta-study also confirms trends observed in other preliminary research: one infection protects “at least as long, if not longer,” than two doses of mRNA vaccines.
“Vaccination is the surest way to acquire immunity,” nuanced the study’s lead author, Dr.r Stephen Lim of the University of Washington School of Medicine as he published his results.
These encouraging findings concern more than 3.8 billion people, or 46% of the world’s population, i.e. the amount of people who “are estimated to have been infected with the Omicron variant and its sub-lines”. according to the researchers.
An end in sight?
The World Health Organization is still maintaining its maximum alert level three years after the outbreak of a global health emergency.
Surveillance of new variants is still a concern, even if the pandemic seems to have found its balance and the risks are decreasing day by day, according to Louis Flamand, also a member of the CoVaRR-Net team, responsible for monitoring the arrival of dangerous mutations. . “In future years, it will become a space of viruses which will evolve, but which will cause seasonal infections. […] Normally, that’s what should happen. »
In a sign that the end is near, several organizations have stopped monitoring COVID-19. The United States Department of Health and Human Services and Johns Hopkins University have discontinued data release. THE Duty also recently stopped relaying the daily death toll from the Quebec Ministry of Health.