Vaccination induced immunity is still stronger than natural immunity for COVID-19.
This, according to the pediatrician, epidemiologist and translation researcher and member of the WHO PCV Expert Advisory group Professor Fiona Russell.
While speaking at the Fiji National University (FNU) explain the science panel discussion, she said it was important to get vaccinated.
“Within four weeks after infection, most people do develop protective antibodies that will potentially protect us from further infection but the strength and duration of the immune responses, following infection aren’t really completely understood at the moment and there’s ongoing studies, but it does suggest it could be up to six to eight months after infection,” she said.
“But some of the laboratory studies that have been undertaken, also show that in the laboratory when the immune cells, the antibodies are exposed to the virus, then for the variants, they have a lower ability to be able to fight the virus.
“So recently, there was a study published where they looked at people who’ve been infected last year with last year’s variant, and then in the laboratory, exposed their blood to the different variants to see if they could neutralise the virus and what they found was that people who have been infected, their natural immunity, looked to be weaker against these new variants.
“But what it also showed is that the vaccine appears to have a much broader protection against COVID and its variants, then the body’s natural immune system, which only seems to protect against the variant of the virus that the person was originally infected with.
“And now we’ve got many other variants, so we shouldn’t rely on the body’s natural immune system, of course, it’s an important part of this, but it’s not going to control a pandemic, unfortunately.”
“So getting infected is not the best option at all for anybody and vaccination is certainly a much better approach.”
