People infected with covid-19 may be protected against new infections in the next six months or longer, indicate the results of two studies released on Wednesday by scientific institutions.
In both cases, researchers (in England and the United States) found that those who created antibodies to the new coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again in a minimum of six months, which points to the effectiveness of the vaccines, which cause in the immune system the same reaction, the production of antibodies.
According to one study, people with antibodies to natural infections had “a much lower risk … in the order of the same type of protection that would be obtained with an effective vaccine,” said Ned Sharpless, director of the United States National Cancer Institute. .
“It is very, very rare” to be reinfected, he said.
Another of the studies, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal “New England Journal of Medicine”, involved more than 12,500 health workers in the hospitals of the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Among the 1,265 who had antibodies to the new coronavirus at the beginning, only two tested positive for active infection in the next six months, and none of them developed symptoms.
The results contrast with those obtained from the 11,364 workers who initially had no antibodies, with 223 of them having positive results in the infection tests in the six months that followed.
The National Cancer Institute study involved more than three million people who had been tested for antibodies in two private laboratories in the United States. Only 0.3% of people who initially had antibodies tested positive for coronavirus later, compared with 3% of people who did not have such antibodies.
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