Why should people who had COVID-19 get vaccinated? ‘Hybrid immunity’
A recent CDC study shows people who’ve contracted COVID-19 and are fully vaccinated against the virus are more protected than those who rely on natural immunity alone. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a case-control study that compared the vaccination status of people who’d been infected in 2020 and those reinfected during May to June 2021. Results showed unvaccinated individuals in this category were over two times more likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID again.
Brian Merkel, UW-Green Bay associate professor of microbiology & immunology, said this hybrid immunity creates two different exposure events: The vaccine introduces the body to a coronavirus spike protein, which Merkel said is one of the most important elements for the body to respond to, while infection exposes a person to a collection of different targets found on the whole virus.
