My Revolution-PARTs

People who are vaccinated and then get infected with Omicron may be primed to overcome a broad range of coronavirus variants, early research suggests. A pair of studies showed that infection produced even better immune responses than a booster shot in vaccinated patients. Teams from Covid-19 vaccine maker BioNTech SE and the University of Washington posted the results on preprint server bioRxiv in recent weeks. The findings offer a reassuring sign that the millions of vaccinated people who’ve caught Omicron probably won’t become seriously ill from another variant soon -- even though the research needs to be confirmed, especially by real-world evidence. “We should think about breakthrough infections as essentially equivalent to another dose of vaccine,” said John Wherry, a professor and director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania who wasn’t involved in the research but reviewed the BioNTech study. That could mean that if someone had Covid recently, the...

Experts say it's not likely that the highly transmissible variant - or any other variant - will lead to herd immunity. "Herd immunity is an elusive concept and doesn't apply to coronavirus," says Dr. Don Milton at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Herd immunity is when enough of a population is immune to a virus that it's hard for the germ to spread to those who aren't protected by vaccination or a prior infection. For example, herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a community to be immune. Early hopes of herd immunity against the coronavirus faded for several reasons. One is that antibodies developed from available vaccines or previous infection dwindle with time. While vaccines offer strong protection against severe illness, waning antibodies mean it's still possible to get infected - even for those who are boosted. Then there's the huge variation in vaccinations. In some low-income countries, less than 5% of ...

WASHINGTON: People who are infected after getting vaccinated develop a greatly enhanced immune response to variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, according to a lab study. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), shows that a breakthrough infection generates a robust immune response against the Delta variant. The findings suggest that the immune response in such people is likely to be highly effective against other variants as the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate. "You can't get a better immune response than this. These vaccines are very effective against severe disease," said study senior author Fikadu Tafesse, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the US. "Our study suggests that individuals who are vaccinated and then exposed to a breakthrough infection have super immunity," Tafesse said. The study found that antibodies measured in blood samples of breakthro...