{"id":1234,"date":"2021-03-18T09:16:50","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T13:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2021-03-18T09:16:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T13:16:50","slug":"how-long-lasting-is-immunity-after-infection-after-vaccination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1234","title":{"rendered":"How long lasting is immunity after infection? After vaccination?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Question:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0How long is immunity from prior case vs. immunity from vaccine? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Answer:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0We&#8217;re still learning.\u00a0 Some of what we currently know is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Immunity after infection: <\/strong>There is a <a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/371\/6529\/eabf4063\">lot of heterogeneity<\/a>&nbsp;in how lasting immunity is after infection depending on a host of individual factors, including the severity of the&nbsp;disease.&nbsp; This means that while one person may be quite well protected for many months, another may not be.&nbsp; In this vein, just yesterday&nbsp;<em>Lancet <\/em>published results from a population-based study out of Denmark,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(21)00575-4\/fulltext\">Assessment of protection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 among 4 million PCR-tested individuals<\/a>.&nbsp; The study used Denmark&#8217;s comprehensive testing and health information system to assess the degree to which individuals who tested positive in the March-May period were reinfected (e.g. tested positive again) in the September-December period.&nbsp; Authors found&nbsp;that &#8220;protection against repeat infection was 80\u00b75% (95% CI 75\u00b74\u201384\u00b75),&#8221; however protection from repeat infection was much lower in older ages.&nbsp; This offers compelling evidence that immunity after infection is relatively robust 6-8 months post-infection at a population-level.&nbsp; Of course, like all studies, this one has limitations.&nbsp; For example, during the study period new variants of concern had not established themselves in Denmark; we&#8217;re still unsure how protected from reinfection an individual is if exposed to a new variant.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>Immunity from vaccination:<\/strong> Unlike immunity after infection,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chop.edu\/centers-programs\/vaccine-education-center\/vaccine-safety\/immune-system-and-health\">immunity after vaccination<\/a> is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better-immunity-than-an-actual-infection-145476\">generally far more robust<\/a> across the population (e.g. more homogeneity in effective immune response).&nbsp; Since available data from clinical trials from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson &amp; Johnson only span several months post-vaccination, we know that protection in the months after vaccination is robust, but we don&#8217;t yet know how long the protection lasts.&nbsp; We just don&#8217;t have the data yet,&nbsp;but as the months and years progress, we will!&nbsp; When it comes to variants of concern, so far available data indicates that the vaccines offer protection.&nbsp; If protection were to wane (either in duration or due to a new variant), booster shots would be required.&nbsp; For more on the variant\/vaccine issues, check out the perspective published yesterday in <em>JAMA,&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2777785?guestAccessKey=7b45680e-20b6-4cbd-8f0b-c6e88b5fae59&amp;utm_source=silverchair&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=article_alert-jama&amp;utm_content=olf&amp;utm_term=031721\">COVID-19 Vaccines vs Variants\u2014Determining How Much Immunity Is Enough<\/a>.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question:\u00a0How long is immunity from prior case vs. immunity from vaccine? Answer:\u00a0We&#8217;re still learning.\u00a0 Some of what we currently know is this: Immunity after infection: There is a lot of heterogeneity&nbsp;in how lasting immunity is after infection depending on a host of individual factors, including the severity of the&nbsp;disease.&nbsp; This means that while one person [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38,64],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-1234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-immunity","category-vaccines","tag-reinfection","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/pexels-photo-5417674.jpeg?fit=868%2C1300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1236,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions\/1236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}