According to a Brazilian study, vaccination provides greater protection after an infection. Data that remains to be confirmed with the Omicron variant.
Is it useful to get vaccinated if you have already caught Covid, and therefore already developed antibodies? The answer is yes. It’s even better. A Brazilian study shows additional protection provided by vaccination after infection.
A clear difference
Vaccines have been shown to be effective in protecting against severe forms of Covid-19. But do they provide additional protection when the individual has already been infected before? According to Brazilian researchers who have evaluated four vaccines in this context, it is yes.
They conducted their assessment on CoronaVac vaccines [Sinovac]ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 [AstraZeneca]Ad26.COV2.S [Janssen]and BNT162b2 [Pfizer-BioNtech]. To do this, they compared the evolution of an infection in more than 30,000 cases of reinfection after a first infection followed by a vaccine with a control group, including people who had never been infected before immunization.
What d’Omicron?
For all four vaccines, they were able to find that having been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, then vaccinated, conferred “additional protection against symptomatic infections and severe cases in previously infected individuals”note the authors.
Conducted between February 2020 and November 2021, the study does not take into account the Omicron variant, which is more contagious and less susceptible to vaccines.