A new study by the Yale School of Public Health has analyzed data on natural immunity to estimate how often unvaccinated individuals can expect to become reinfected with COVID-19.
“The overall goal of the study was to provide an answer to a question that at this point in the pandemic would be impossible to answer empirically, which is how long after you’ve been infected by SARS-CoV-2 can you expect to possess immunity against the virus before you become vulnerable to reinfection?” Hayley Hassler, a co-author of the study, told Yale Daily News.
The study determined that natural immunity is somewhat short, and in a model where everyone has either been infected with COVID-19 or vaccinated against it, those who are unvaccinated can expect to be reinfected with the coronavirus roughly every 16-17 months.
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“Our results are based on average times of waning immunity across multiple infected individuals,” Hassler said. “Any one of those individuals may experience longer or shorter durations of immunity depending on immune status, cross-immunity, age, and multiple other factors.”
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 57.1 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
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