Natural Immunity Protects Against Severe Infection Throughout Pandemic

Written by Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH on January 5, 2024. Posted in Current News

When a patient called from from 2022 forward with a new episode of COVID-19, the first thing I asked them was “have you had COVID-19 in the past?” This is such an important question because that natural immunity has been powerful in mitigating risks of future COVID-19 hospitalization.

Uuskula et al leveraged a nationwide database in Estonia to give critical information on the changing waves of COVID-19 infection:

“Vaccination in Estonia began in January 2021, with a cumulative vaccination uptake about 70% among adult population by June 2022. Within the time period of data underlying the present study, Estonia had three large pandemic waves: the first was from March to June 2020 (SARS-CoV-2 pre-variant of concern era); the second was from November 2020 to May 2021 (first the Alpha variant, then the Delta variant); and the third was from December 2022 (Omicron variant). Our analysis used data derived from the nationwide and population-based universal tax-funded Estonian health care system. We conducted a retrospective cohort study (N=329,496 adults which allowed 246,113 individuals being matched into the three cohorts) based on linking individual-level data on laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination status, and health care utilization between 26 February 2020 and 23 February 2022 from the national e-health records.”

The conclusions are supported by the data. Vaccine-induced immunity conferred a higher risk than natural immunity for infection (Delta aHR 4.90, 95%CI 4.48–5.36; Omicron 1.13, 95%CI 1.06–1.21) and hospitalization (Delta aHR 7.19, 95%CI 4.02–12.84). Risk of infection and severe COVID-19 were driven by natural immunity and the variant of SARS-CoV-2 causing infection. Vaccination made risks worse particular during the Delta wave where vaccination resulted in a 7.19-fold increased risk of hospitalization.

Thus, here is a current risk stratification approach I use in my practice everyday. You can see the most important factor is previous COVID-19 infection inferred as natural immunity. Vaccination should now be added as a risk factor for hospitalization.

Source: Peter McCullough Substack

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