Two studies point out that a former Covid-19 patient has every interest in being vaccinated to strengthen the immunity already acquired by his past infection.
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Are we better protected against the coronavirus after being infected or after being vaccinated? The answer is not necessarily binary, but two studies, published Friday April 1 in the Lancet Infectious Diseasespoint out that a former Covid-19 patient has every interest in being vaccinated to strengthen the immunity already acquired by his past infection.
The first of these works is based on the health data of more than 200,000 Brazilians, whose country has been one of the hardest hit in the world by the Covid pandemic. In this sample, some of the people were infected without being vaccinated. Among those who survived the disease, some received a vaccine and some did not. However, these “Vaccines appear to give additional and substantial protection to people already infected with Covid-19 before”, notes one of the authors, Julio Croda.
The second study, carried out using Swedish data, goes in the same direction. It shows that former Covid-19 patients retain high immunity for up to twenty months. But it also indicates that these people see the risk of reinfection drop even more, by two thirds, approximately, if they were vaccinated after their first infection. However, these two studies have a weakness: they cover a period which precedes the emergence of the Omicron variant, which is clearly more contagious and resistant to vaccines than its predecessors.