Researchers found in a new study that a person who is fully vaccinated but without boosters had essentially no lasting protection against infection from the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
The study also found that people who have had a previous infection of the coronavirus have developed immunity that is as effective as a recent booster shot in preventing a new omicron-fueled illness.
Protection Against COVID-19
At the same time, any immunity to the highly contagious variant, either from infection or vaccination, appeared to offer significant and lasting protection against serious illness, hospitalization, and death, the researchers found.
The study also noted that if a person has not yet had either the virus or the vaccine, it is better to get the vaccine as per the recommendations of doctors. The results of the study, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
It also provides some of the best understanding to date on the longevity of different types of coronavirus immunity and offers insight into the future of the pandemic, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, Laith Jamal Abu-Raddad, is a co-author of the study, as per the Seattle Times.
The medical expert said that COVID-19 is going to stay with us "essentially forever," noting that the disease was not actually going to disappear. He said that the real question is will humans be able to live with it somehow.
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The study is the latest of several that are examining countrywide data from Qatar, the small Middle East nation that is home to under three million people. The region's population is considerably younger than most developed countries, with only 9% of residents being older than 50 years compared to the U.S. which has roughly 35%.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Qatar is more diverse than other nations, given that 89% of its residents are expatriates from 150 other nations. The country also has a very robust coronavirus testing program, a high COVID-19 vaccine uptake, and a centralized public health database that provides researchers with clean, clear data to analyze the effects of the vaccines over time.
Future Infections
Researchers opted to look at data as the omicron sub-variants known as BA.1 and BA.2 tore through the country's population from late December to late February.
The study found that people who received both shots of either the Comirnaty vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech or the Spikevax shot from Moderna when they first became available but then neglected to shore up their immune systems with booster shots had essentially no protection against a mild to moderate case of COVID-19.
The researchers' findings come as another study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that infection or vaccination with the omicron variant does little or nothing to protect against future infections. Health care workers who were infected with the alpha variant of COVID-19 produced a less powerful antibody response to the omicron variant.
The findings showed that infected patients from the beginning of the pandemic had zero immune-boosting against the omicron variant. In a report, the BMJ said that people who were previously infected with the omicron variant showed poor immunity-boosting against new COVID-19 infections, Fox News reported.
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