The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study issued late last week that people who are unvaccinated are more than twice likely to get reinfected with Covid-19, data the federal health authority is using to bolster its stance that vaccination is essential.
The CDC published the findings of the study Friday. It examined roughly 250 people in Kentucky who had contracted Covid-19 in 2020 and tested positive again for the virus between May and June of this year. Their responses were compared to about 500 people who were infected with the virus around the same time, with the major differentiator being that the 500 people got vaccinated after becoming infected last year.
The study showed that people who were unvaccinated were 2.3 times more likely to contract the virus a second time than those who got vaccinated.
“If you have had Covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country.”
The researchers were not able to determine reinfection of the unvaccinated through whole genome sequencing, which is considered to be the highest standard. The study also said that in some cases people who tested positive a second time could be the result of a longer than usual process of one's body shedding the virus, or a person's inability to shed the virus altogether after initial infection. Even so, the study said that the long period between the first and second time the patients tested positive pointed to reinfection as the most likely cause.
Other studies have shown that both prior infection and vaccination provide some level of immune protection against reinfection. However, according to the National Health Institute, studies have shown that prior infection may produce a weaker immune response to Covid-19 variants, but when a person who has developed natural immunity from prior infection combined with vaccination, their immune responses against the variants were improved. Studies have also shown that some variants have managed in some instances to evade the vaccines.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Griffin, chief of infectious disease at healthcare provider network ProHealth New York, who wasn’t involved in the study, stated, “If you decide you’re just going to trust that natural immunity is going to protect you, you’re more than twice as likely to get infected as those people who decide to get vaccinated."
Source: WSJ
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