Research suggests most people who recovered from covid-19 are immune for at least eight months. Yet epidemiologists are mostly still urging this population to get the vaccine if it’s their turn in line.
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See other free reports here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. Research suggests most people who recovered from covid-19 are immune for at least eight months. Yet epidemiologists are mostly still urging this population to get the vaccine if it’s their turn in line. Official guidance says vaccines should be offered regardless of whether people were previously infected. That’s per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also says the vaccine is safe for people who have had a previous infection. Former CDC director Thomas Frieden said he’d advise most people to get the vaccine, even if they’ve had covid-19. But Frieden added that he doesn’t think it’s wrong for someone in a low-risk group who’d already had the illness to defer if they thought someone else could use the dose. One health system asked workers to do just that, Frieden recently noted on Twitter. The limits on vaccine supply bolster the argument that recovered people should let others go first. As administration of the vaccine encounters bottlenecks across the country, the pressure is on to get the shots in as many arms as quickly as possible. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that prioritizing people who don’t already have natural immunity could allow health officials to get more impact from limited supplies, especially in areas where many people have already been infected, according to a modeling study that has not been peer reviewed.
