Immunity people enjoy after recovering from COVID-19 is better than the protection bestowed from vaccination, according to a new study from Israel.
Researchers analyzing data from the county’s health database from August to September found both COVID-19 infections and severe disease were higher among the vaccinated than those who recovered from the illness, also known as people with natural immunity.
For instance, the naturally immune had a 10.5 per 100,000 infection rate four to six months following their recovery, versus a 69.2 per 100,000 rate among the vaccinated.
The number of severe cases was also higher among the vaccinated: 0.9 percent of all cases among that group were severe, compared with 0.5 percent of cases among the recovered.
Researchers found that protection against infection dropped over time among both the recovered and vaccinated, but the drop was more pronounced among the vaccinated.
They also studied two other cohorts: people with natural immunity who later got a vaccine, and people who got a vaccine and later recovered from an infection.
Case rates were low in both those groups. They were the lowest by a small number in the naturally immune who got a jab.
“We found that protection against the Delta variant wanes over time for both vaccinated and previously infected individuals and that an additional dose restores protection,” Yair Goldberg, an associate professor at the Israel Institute of Technology who led the pre-print study (pdf), told The Epoch Times in an email.
The study analyzed the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the one most used in Israel.
COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Limitations of the study included having longer-term data for the recovered versus the other groups; an undetermined number of vaccinated people not being diagnosed as naturally immune; and possible detection bias because the naturally immune are less likely to get tested than the vaccinated.
By Zachary Stieber
