Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Updated : September 10, 2021 11:49 AM IST
After recovery from any virus, your body forms some natural antibodies. These antibodies offer protection or immunity from the virus for a certain period of time. The same if true for the COVID-19 virus. If you have been infected by this deadly virus and recovered, you will enjoy some degree of protection, which can vary from six months to a year. Now, a new study from Rockefeller University in the US has found out that if a person is infected with the COVID virus and later is vaccinated fully against it, the immune system will receive a significant boost, which will provide him or her a lasting defence against all future variants. Researchers have given this the name of "superhuman immunity" or "hybrid immunity". This study is published in the pre-print server BioRxiv and has not been peer-reviewed yet.
For the purpose of the study, researchers looked at fully vaccinated people. All participants received two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. They saw that some previously infected people's immune systems produce a vast number of "flexible" antibodies that respond very well to different types of coronaviruses. According to them, the results of this study revealed that the antibodies in these individuals neutralised the six variants of concern tested. This included the Delta and Beta variant, besides many other viruses related to SARS-CoV-2. Seeing this amazing response to the vaccine, the researchers were thrilled. Moreover, the research team was also able to defeat a virus, which was specially engineered to contain 20 mutations that are known to prevent SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from binding to it.
Researchers also studied the response of fully vaccinated people people without prior infection to COVID-19 and people were recoverees but were not vaccinated. They saw that those people produced antibodies that were powerless against the lab-grown virus. But antibodies in people who developed "hybrid immunity" were protected against it.
Though researchers agree that they are being a little speculative here, they suspect that those people with hybrid immunity may also enjoy some degree of protection against other SARS-like viruses that are yet to infect humans.
According to the researchers, this study proves the amazing efficacy of mRNA vaccines in people with prior exposure to COVID-19. They are hopeful that this will pave the way for the development of a pan-coronavirus vaccine that will protect against all future variants of COVID-19. However, they agree that further research is needed to verify the results of this study.
(With inputs from IANS)
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