For people who have survived a previous encounter with covid-19, only one dose of an mRNA vaccine is needed for complete protection. The findings give weight to the suggested idea by some experts that survivors should be given only one chance to expand the vaccine supply.
Researchers on Mount Sinai have been studying the pros and cons of coronavirus immunity since the beginning of the pandemic. Their earlier work, for example, suggested that the natural immunity to infection tends to last at least six months in most survivors. However, it is still an area of active research and rSimplicity is possible. And many who have survived covid-19 are at a higher risk for serious illnesses if they are unlikely to catch it and become ill again. Both doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommend that everyone who is eligible should receive it, even if they have already suffered Covid-19.
While the introduction of vaccinations has been steadily improving since last year, only about 19% of the US received at least one dose, and less than 10% were fully vaccinated. Some scientists hope to speed up vaccination efforts argued that covid-19 survivors should be instructed to receive only one dose of the similar vaccine Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech. YOUuntil recently they were the only available vaccines in the country. More experts have warned that we still do not know if these people will be as fully protected as everyone who gets the standard two-dose course.
To help resolve this question, researchers on Mount Sinai looked at 109 previously uninfected volunteers who were either fully vaccinated or survivors (confirmed by antibody testing) who received only one dose of the mRNA vaccine at the time. . In another group of 231 people, they compared the level of reported side effects between survivors and uninfected people after vaccination.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that single-dose survivors had a similar and often greater antibody response to the coronavirus than those who were fully vaccinated. Survivors also tended to experience more frequent side effects after the first dose such as pain at the site of infection or fatigue, compared to people who were not infected after the first dose, but at levels similar to humans after taking the full two received doses. Since these side effects are usually a sign of the body’s immune system learning how to recognize the virus, it also suggests that survivors who receive only one shot still receive as much protection against covid-19 as anyone who takes two doses. get.
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“For this reason, we believe that a single dose of vaccine is sufficient for people already infected with SARS-CoV-2 to achieve immunity,” said study author Viviana Simon, a professor in the departments of microbiology and medicine. on Mount, said. Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, in a statement released by the university.
The findings of the study were originally released early last month to the public as a preliminary paper on the website medRxiv. At the time, they were remarkable enough for the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, to write about them. Although Collins favorably discussed the study, which was funded by NIH, he also pointed out that it would be necessary to see other studies that support the same conclusion before there is likely to be an official change in the leadership of the Food and Drug Administration or CDC would be. The new study does not weighs on Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine that uses a different technology to increase covid-19 immunity, and what it could mean for covid-19 survivors.
If the data does appear, it could very well contribute to the expansion of our vaccine supply. Nobody is really sure yet, but from 20% to 30% of the country already had covid-19. And while access to vaccines is getting better, any increase in speed will help a lot.