People Previously Infected with COVID-19 Less Likely to be Reinfected with the Virus, Providence Study Reveals

A study recently showed that the level of protection granted by previous COVID-19 infection among unvaccinated people was on par with the protection levels provided by mRNA vaccines, with natural immunity that provides a longer protection window than mRNA vaccines.

A EurekAlert! report said that the research was done before the highly transmissible COVID-19 Omicron variant emerged in the United States.

According to the study's senior author Ari Robicsek, MD, chief medical analytics officer at Providence, one of the largest health systems in the US, they discovered that before the emergence of Omicron, natural immunity offered a similar level of protection from COVID-19 infection as mRNA vaccination.

He added that vaccination is a substantially safer approach to acquiring that immunity. This study was conducted by a group of expert scientists and clinicians within the Providence Research Network.

Protection From Reinfection

This new research was published in the JAMA Network Open journal by Investigators at Providence. It examined data from more than 1,000 patients who tested for SARS-CoV-2 at 1,300 care sites across the extensive hare system of Providence from October 1, 2010, to November 1, 2021.

The study investigators observed that previous COVID-19 infection was 85-percent protective against reinfection and 88-percent protective against hospital admission, with protection from reinfection that lasts for up to nine months after the initial infection as far out as they were able to examine.

The providence research, one of the largest of its type, showcases the essentials of linking researchers with large-scale health care data and the consequence an interconnected health system can have in understanding certain public challenges.

Longevity and Strength of Natural Immunity

This is an extraordinary study not just in scale but in its expensive follow-up period and inclusion of only unvaccinated people who have symptomatic COVID-19, a similar report from Eurasia Review specified.

According to the chief clinical officer of Providence, Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, this data is key to helping researchers understand the longevity and strength of natural immunity and enables them to compare the efficacy of a prior infection with mRNA vaccines.

She added that the results offer a new understanding of the length f protection after an initial infection among the unvaccinated individuals and could have essential implications for vaccination guidelines and public health policy.

What the CDC is Doing

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has continued to work to further understand reinfections with COVID-19 "to inform public health action."

The health agency uses a range of data sources to analyze how frequent reinfections occur, who is at risk for reinfection, and the danger of reinfection when there is community spread of the Omicron variant or other COVID-19 strains.

Moreover, the CDC has also worked closely with public health jurisdictions and the Council of State and Territorial, Epidemiologisexternal CSTE icon, to help states count repeat infections in the same people over time.

An updated national surveillance case definition of COVID-19 was introduced in September 2021 and included criteria for counting reinfections following previous probable or verified reinfections.

The CDC is currently working with several public health jurisdictions to identify reinfections to gather and evaluate data.

Lastly, the agency is publishing various analyses that utilize datasets from different sources, including cohort studies that follow the same individuals over time.

Related information about COVID-19 reinfection is shown on HEC Science & Technology's YouTube video below:

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