Another important argument in favor of vaccination against coronavirus is given

by time news

A new study has shed light on coronavirus-related immunity. When the Delta variant was dominant, vaccination and prior infection were protective against COVID-19, according to the study. Vaccination was the safest.

When the Delta variant was dominant in the United States, both vaccination and prior infection helped protect against COVID-19, but vaccination was the safest way to protect yourself, according to a study released Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The data included in the study was collected before the Omicron wave in the United States and before booster shots became widely available, CNN reports.

“While the epidemiology of COVID-19 may change as new variants emerge, vaccination remains the safest strategy to prevent future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term consequences, and death,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers analyzed the risk of COVID-19 infection and hospitalization among four groups of people: vaccinated with and without prior infection and unvaccinated with and without prior infection. The study data includes approximately 1.1 million cases in California and New York between late May and mid-November 2021.

Overall, COVID-19 incidence and hospitalization rates were highest among unvaccinated people who had no previous diagnosis.

At first, the incidence rate in individuals with prior infection was higher than in those who were vaccinated without prior infection. As the Delta variant took over in the US in the following months, the tide turned and, according to the study, people who survived a previous infection had lower incidences than those who were vaccinated alone.

“Experts first looked at previous infections confirmed by lab tests by the spring of 2021, when the Alpha variant was prevalent across the country. Prior to the Delta variant, vaccination against COVID-19 provided better protection against subsequent infection than previous infection experience. However, looking back to the summer and fall of 2021, when Delta dominated this country, recovering from a previous infection now offered more protection against a subsequent infection than getting vaccinated,” says Dr. Benjamin Silk, head of surveillance and analytics at the CDC.

However, this shift coincides with the timing of the weakening of vaccine immunity in many people. The study did not take into account the time after vaccination and the potential weakening of the immune system in the analysis. The study also does not reflect the effect of booster doses and was conducted before the introduction of the Omicron variant.

Throughout the study period, the risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 was significantly higher among unvaccinated people who had not previously been diagnosed with COVID-19 than in any other group.

“Taken together, the body of evidence suggests that both vaccination and COVID survival do provide protection against subsequent reinfection, infection, and hospitalization,” says Dr. Eli Rosenberg, New York State Associate Director of Science. “Having COVID for the first time comes with significant risks, and vaccination and continued use of boosters are indeed the only safe choice to prevent COVID infection and serious illness.”

While there is no doubt that prior infection provides some level of protection, vaccination can increase that protection, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN.

“If a person who has had natural COVID is then vaccinated, their antibody levels are much, much higher than after the natural infection itself. And what do we know about higher levels of antibodies: protection, and secondly, the variety of antibodies that your immune system produces is more diverse. The thought is that you will be better protected against a lot of options,” said Dr. Schaffner, who is a vaccine consultant for the CDC but was not a participant in the study.

The experts noted that the characteristics of coronavirus variants are changing, in particular in how well they affect immunity from previous infections.

“The data clearly show that vaccination provides the safest protection against COVID-19 and additional protection for those who have had a previous infection. In addition, they show that people who remain unvaccinated are at the greatest risk of hospitalization and death, said Erica Pan, state epidemiologist for the California Department of Public Health, in a statement. “In addition to this study, recent data on the highly contagious Omicron variant show that revaccination provides significant additional protection against infection, hospitalization, and death.”

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