If I’ve Already Had COVID-19, Do I Still Need the Vaccine?
To sum it up: Yes.
If we are ever to go back to our normal lives before the pandemic, the population needs to become immune to the coronavirus. Even if you’ve suffered and recovered from COVID-19, the vaccine can still help you boost your immunity and response to the virus. “In those that have recovered, the vaccine will boost natural immunity and it will be more effective at preventing disease,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in Baltimore.
Evidence has shown that the immune memory to the virus in various patients with severe or life-threatening symptoms was not created so as to efficiently protect them against another infection. “This is an active area of study and the vaccine trials will be analyzed in detail to see how the vaccine impacted natural immunity, as 10% of those in the trials had prior infection,” Adalja added.
More than that, it is also possible that people who were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms do not have lasting immunity. Coronaviruses are known for causing irregular and partial immune responses in humans. Even with the common cold, people lose immunity in months to a year or two, warned Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
