STUDY: COVID-19 Survivors with Natural Immunity at Low Risk for Reinfection, Severe Symptoms

According to a new study, those who survived COVID-19 have such a strong natural immunity that their chance of reinfection or severe side effects is minimal.

The study, conducted by researchers in Qatar and published in the New England Journal of Medicine reviewed global databases for 353,000 patients infected between February 28, 2020 and April 28, 2021, per Just the News.

The researchers excluded about 87,500 people who were vaccinated and found that of the remaining population, only 1,304 got reinfected.

“Reinfections had 90% lower odds of resulting in hospitalization or death than primary infections,” the researchers said. “...Reinfections were rare and were generally mild, perhaps because of the primed immune system after primary infection.”

“Accordingly, for a person who has already had a primary infection, the risk of having a severe reinfection is only approximately 1% of the risk of a previously uninfected person having a severe primary infection,” the study found.

Researchers explained that it still needs to be determined “whether such protection against severe disease at reinfection lasts for a longer period, analogous to the immunity that develops against other seasonal ‘common-cold’ coronaviruses, which elicit short-term immunity against mild reinfection but longer-term immunity against more severe illness with reinfection.”

Researchers said such a finding could be significant because it could mean that COVID-19 could eventually “adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic.”