Unvaccinated COVID-19 survivors are 2.3 times more likely to contract the virus AGAIN than those who get the vaccine after recovering, CDC says
- Unvaccinated COVID-19 survivors are still vulnerable to the virus, a new CDC study finds
- The unvaccinated group who were previously infected were 2.34 times as likely to be reinfected when compared to their vaccinated peers
- Partially vaccinated people were 1.56 times as likely to contract the virus again as well
- More than 70% of the unvaccinated Covid survivors in the study contracted the virus compared to 20% of those fully vaccinated
- CDC recommends that all Americans, whether previously infected or not, get vaccinated when they can
COVID-19 survivors who do not get vaccinated have higher odds of contracting the virus again than those who do get their shots, a new report finds.
Data analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that those who were previously infected and didn’t get vaccinated were 2.3 times more likely to be reinfected than survivors who were immunized.
The findings provide further evidence supporting vaccination for all Americans, even those who had mild or asymptomatic cases of Covid.
The data also suggest that immunity from the available vaccines is stronger than those from natural-forming antibodies.
The U.S. vaccine rollout has slowed in recent months after reaching a peak in April, though there has been a recent uptick in people getting the shots.
Fully vaccinated COVID survivors are less than half as likely to contract the virus once again compared to their unvaccinated peers
More than 70% of the unvaccinated Covid survivors in the study contracted the virus compared to 20% of those fully vaccinated. Pictured: Amanda Tetlak, a registered nurse, administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to Fred Miller in St Petersburg, Florida, August 2021
For the report, published on Friday, the CDC gathered data from Covid survivors in Kentucky from May to June 2021.
The study included 246 COVID-19 survivors – 50 of whom were fully vaccinated, 179 not vaccinated at all and 17 who were partially vaccinated.
Partially vaccinated individuals are those who have received at least one dose of a vaccine, but are not two weeks removed from receiving the final dose in their vaccine series.
There was also a control group of 492 individuals, 284 of which were unvaccinated, to compare data against.
Researchers gathered positivity rate among the groups, and normalized them based on positivity rates from the control group.
The research team found that those who had previously tested positive for Covid, but were unvaccinated were 2.34 times likely to contract the virus once again than those who survived Covid but did get vaccinated later.
A staggering 72.8 percent of unvaccinated Covid survivors in the study were reinfected compared to 20.3 percent of those fully vaccinated.
‘These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection,’ the researchers wrote.
‘To reduce their risk of infection, all eligible persons should be offered vaccination, even if they have been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.’
Researchers also found that natural antibodies may not be as effective as the vaccine in combatting virus variants.
Natural antibodies were found to be ineffective at combatting the South African ‘Beta’ variant in many people, for example.
The data match previous research that shows people who receive a COVID-19 vaccine have higher antibody levels than those relying on natural antibodies.
While there has yet to have been a proven link between antibody levels and immunity, it is strongly believed that more antibodies make a person more protected.
Other research has found that COVID-19 survivors may be generating high antibody levels after only one shot of a two-dose vaccine.
Research from the CDC shows that partially vaccinated people are 1.56 times as likely to contract the virus than the fully vaccinated.
There was a slight drop of infection rates from the partially vaccinated in the control group when compared to the Covid-survivors, as only 6.9 percent of survivors contracted the virus, compared to 7.9 percent of the control group.
The agency recommends that Americans still complete their vaccine series to stay protected from the virus.
Around 35 million Americans are recorded to have contracted COVID-19.
Around 58 percent of the total population, and 70 percent of American adults, are at least partially vaccinated, according to CDC data.
