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A new study has found that a previous natural infection of COVID-19 helps provide protection against reinfection by “85 percent or greater.”
The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study was conducted by Qatar’s National Study Group for COVID-19 Epidemiology. They examined 353,326 COVID-19 patients in Qatar and infections occurred between Feb. 28, 2020, and April 28, 2021.
About 87,500 people were vaccinated during the study and these individuals were excluded.
Only 1,304 contracted COVID-19 again and no one required intensive care treatment for the disease.
Researchers wrote, “In earlier studies, we assessed the efficacy of previous natural infection as protection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 as being 85 percent or greater.”
“Accordingly, for a person who has already had a primary infection, the risk of having a severe reinfection is only approximately 1 percent of the risk of a previously uninfected person having a severe primary infection.”
We live in a strange world where people who don’t take a medicine for a virus because they already have natural immunity and can’t transmit to other people, are being blamed for not taking a medicine that doesn’t stop those who take it from transmitting the virus to other people.
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 28, 2021
“It needs to be determined whether such protection against severe disease at reinfection lasts for a longer period, analogous to the immunity that develops against other seasonal ‘common cold’ coronaviruses, which elicit short-term immunity against mild reinfection but longer-term immunity against more severe illness with reinfection,” the study said.
Natural immunity works. Not perfectly, but it works. Better than the vaccines work.
Reinfection from Covid-19 is rare, severe disease is even rarer, a study of people in Qatar findshttps://t.co/t9vD6h9O8t
— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) November 25, 2021
“If this were the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus (or at least the variants studied to date) could adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic,” the study said.
Switzerland just extended the period where post infection immunity is solid proof of immunity from 6 months to one year. They recognise the obvious fact that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than that provided by vaccines. Hello @sajidjavid
— Hugh Osmond (@hughosmond) November 25, 2021
More from Western Journal:
The study noted that once-infected individuals have “90 percent lower odds of resulting in hospitalization or death than primary infections.”
“Four reinfections were severe enough to lead to acute care hospitalization. None led to hospitalization in an ICU, and none ended in death,” the study reported.
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“Reinfections were rare and were generally mild, perhaps because of the primed immune system after primary infection.”
“When you have only 1,300 reinfections among that many people, and four cases of severe disease, that’s pretty remarkable,” said John Alcorn, an expert in immunology and professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh, according to CNN.
Alcorn was not part of the team that conducted the study.
One potential weak spot in the study, according to CNN: It was limited to citizens of Qatar, and might not be universally replicable.
