HOUSTON — So why is immunity from a COVID vaccine better than natural immunity?
Natural Immunity vs. Vaccine Immunity
It’s been a question many people have had since COVID-19 vaccines came out: If you already recovered from coronavirus, do you really need a vaccine?
A lot of people think that natural immunity works just as well as the vaccines. But new information from the CDC shows that the vaccine actually offers more protection than natural immunity.
Vaccines provide stronger protection
The findings from the CDC showed that people who had survived a previous COVID infection were more than five times more likely to be infected again compared to those fully vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
These results are worse than previous studies, but this research was done while the more contagious Delta variant was spreading like wildfire.
Natural immunity plus vaccine
The good news is that multiple studies have shown that people with natural immunity that go on to be vaccinated greatly increase their protection from COVID. In some countries, someone who has recovered from infection and gets one vaccine dose is considered fully vaccinated.