Past SARS-CoV-2 infection protection against re-infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis
www.thelancet.com
Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant and declined more rapidly over time than protection against previous variants. Protection from severe disease was high for all variants. The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.

Background

Understanding the level and characteristics of protection from past SARS-CoV-2 infection against subsequent re-infection, symptomatic COVID-19 disease, and severe disease is essential for predicting future potential disease burden, for designing policies that restrict travel or access to venues where there is a high risk of transmission, and for informing choices about when to receive vaccine doses. We aimed to systematically synthesise studies to estimate protection from past infection by variant, and where data allow, by time since infection.

Interpretation

Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant and declined more rapidly over time than protection against previous variants. Protection from severe disease was high for all variants. The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.

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  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Funding

    Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J Stanton, T Gillespie, and J and E Nordstrom.

    Edit: Caroline Stein is with IMHE, one of the labs that has been making notoriously bad predictions since the beginning. See this post and my comments on it. Imhe is one of the groups that politicians in DC use to manufacture consent around the ignoring the pandemic and should taken very cautiously.

  • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The problems with infection are obvious, but it is absolutely worth doing analyses of the endemic situation. I haven't checked the work on this particular study, but past infection does provide high quality protection, absolutely, compared to the approved medical products which only have genetic material for the spike protein subunit S1 of whichever strain they're based on. Whether that high quality protection comes at cost, or isn't worth considering because of risk of death, isn't what this study alone can determine. Anything can of course be misinterpreted by bad faith policymakers.

    For the most disruptive public health crisis in modern history, it's absurd that the data is as bad as it is. Especially the trial and pharmacovigilance data.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I don't know that there's anything we can do with this as inviduals. As far as I know all the pre-Omicron strains are effectively gone and BA1 is on it's way out in favor of XBB1.5 and it's daughters. And, like, with all the vulnerable people already dead I'd think the main concern now is disability from Long Covid.

    • Monsieur_bleu [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      the thing is, time still exists so people are ageing into "vulnerable people" all the time, also covid infections makes you vulnerable in itself.