Latest US study finds two ways to acquire ‘super immunity’

The research is a follow up to the Oregaon University’s study published in December last year that finds that breakthrough infection created “super immunity”. The study measured cross-neutralization of blood serum from breakthrough cases using multiple live SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The new study done before the emergence of the omicron variant suggests that in both cases antibodies found in the blood serum were 10 times more abundant and potent than immunity generated by vaccination alone.

The research was conducted on 104 subjects fully vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that comprises those vaccinated without infection, caught infection before vaccination and caught infection after vaccination. The blood samples from each participant were subjected to three variants of SARS-CoV-2 and it was inferred that the second and third group have much more immunity than the first group with just vaccination.

The new findings suggest each new breakthrough infection potentially brings the pandemic closer to the end and over time, the virus will run into an ever-expanding pool of human immunity.

The scientists , however, have not studied immunity in a group that were exposed to multiple rounds of infection with or without vaccination. But the previous research suggests for them the immune response is much more variable than that from vaccination. “But vaccination combined with immunity from infection almost always provides very strong responses.” senior co-author Marcel Curlin, M.D.

Nevertheless, the results indicated that in near future SARS-CoV-2 may become a mild endemic infection like a ‘seasonal respiratory tract infection’ instead of a pandemic.