Previous Covid Infection Prevents Delta Better than Pfizer Vaccine, Study Shows

People who previously experienced a Covid-19 infection are better protected against the Delta variant than those who received a Pfizer jab, a new study shows.

The large-scale study out of Israel, conducted on over half a million people, compared the immunity of patients who had received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech injection to unvaccinated people who had been previously infected.

“This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity,” researchers concluded.

Alarmingly, the study also found that people who had been vaccinated have a 13-fold increased risk of breakthrough infection from the dreaded Delta variant, compared to the previously infected.

“People given both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-fold more likely to contract a delta infection and seven-fold more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered,” reported Bloomberg, commenting the data demonstrates the “challenge” of solely relying on a vaccine to defeat Covid.

“SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected,” researchers also stated.

Interestingly, the data also suggested that a third test group, made up of people who were previously infected and received only a single vaccine dose, appeared to have even stronger immunity than the other two groups.

“Notably, individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant,” researchers claimed.

The scientists added that the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of a third booster dose, “recently administered in Israel, is still unknown.”

Read the study below: