People
who have taken both doses of a vaccine and were previously infected with
COVID-19 have the strongest protection against the deadly coronavirus, two new
studies stated on Friday. The studies termed it “Hybrid immunity”, reported AFP.

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In
the last two years, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak, as many as 500
million people tested positive for the virus and billions received the jabs
against the virus. The studies underlined the importance of getting vaccinated
for those who have natural immunity after recovering from the disease.

One
of the two studies published in the esteemed The Lancet Infectious Diseases
medical journal analysed the health data of more than 200,000 people in 2020
and 2021 in one of the worst-hit countries Brazil, which has the world’s
second-largest COVID-19 death toll.

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The
study found that for people who have already caught COVID-19, Pfizer and
AstraZeneca’s vaccines offered 90 % immunisation against the virus, while
China’s CoronaVac and Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot jab offered 81 % had 58
% protection against the virus.

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“All
four of these vaccines have proven to provide significant extra protection for
those with a previous Covid-19 infection,” said study author Julio Croda
of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul.

“Hybrid
immunity due to exposure to natural infection and vaccination is likely to be
the norm globally and might provide long-term protection even against emerging
variants,” Pramod Kumar Garg of India’s Translational Health Science and
Technology Institute said in a comment piece linked to the study.

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In
Sweden, a study found that people who recovered from COVID-19 retained a high
level of protection against re-infection for up to 20 months.

And
people with two-vaccine-dose hybrid immunity had a further 66 % lower risk of
re-infection than those with just natural immunity.

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A
study in Qatar published on the medRxiv pre-publication website last week gave
an insight into the protection offered by hybrid immunity against Omicron.

It
found that three vaccine doses had 52 % effectiveness against symptomatic
infection of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant — but that number jumped to 77 % when
the patient had been previously infected.

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The
study, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that “hybrid immunity resulting
from prior infection and recent booster vaccination confers the strongest
protection” against both the BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants.