People who recovered from COVID-19 were better off than those who received a COVID-19 vaccine, researchers find.
People with protection against COVID-19 following recovery from the illness were better protected than those who received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new study.
People who received a vaccine were nearly five times as likely as the naturally immune to test positive for COVID-19 during the Delta era and 1.1 times as likely to test positive for COVID-19 during the Omicron era, researchers in Estonia found.
The vaccinated were also seven times as likely to be admitted to a hospital for COVID-19 amid the spread of the Delta variant and two times as likely to be admitted to a hospital during the Omicron period, when compared with the naturally immune, the researchers found.
“Our study showed that natural immunity offers stronger and longer-lasting protection against infection, symptoms, and hospitalization compared to vaccine-induced immunity,” Dr. Anneli Uusküla, with the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Tartu, and her co-authors wrote.
Previous studies have also found that post-infection immunity is superior to or similar to the protection bestowed by vaccines.
Dr. Uusküla and her colleagues said they felt there were gaps in the literature on the subject, prompting them to work on the study.
They drew from a pool of 329,496 adults and matched many of the adults in three cohorts. One compared people with natural immunity to those who received a vaccine; one compared the naturally immune to people who did not have documented prior infection or vaccination; and one compared the naturally immune to people with hybrid immunity, or both prior infection and vaccination.
People were defined as vaccinated if they had received a full primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine and did not have a documented infection.
The primary outcome was laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 occurring at any time for people without any immunity, after 60 days of recovery from a prior infection for the naturally immune, at least 14 days after completion of a vaccine for the vaccinated group, and at least 14 days after vaccination or 60 days after recovery for people with hybrid immunity.
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