Should people who've recovered from COVID-19 get vaccinated? This is what the government says

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There is some confusion on whether people who had tested positive for COVID-19, and have recovered, should get the COVID-19 vaccine shot or not.

The confusion stems from the fact that the people who had already had COVID-19, shall be having antibodies or immunity against SARS-CoV-2 virus, then what's the need of getting a vaccine shot?

So far India has reported around 1 crore confirmed COVID-19 cases, and about 1.5 lakh deaths. The virus could have infected much higher number of people than the official figure, given that about 85 percent of people can be asymptomatic or must be just experiencing mild flu like symptoms.

The seroprevalence study conducted by ICMR, found that around 7 percent or 62 million of India’s adult population may have been exposed to the coronavirus by mid of August.

Now coming to the question, whether people recovered from COVID-19 should get a vaccine shot or not.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) says it is advisable to receive complete schedule of COVID-19 vaccine irrespective of past history of infection with COVID-19. The government says that this will help in developing a strong immune response against the disease.

Jury is divided

The scientific experts are divided on this.

Some experts say that people who have recovered should not be vaccinated, since they have already developed antibodies to fight the disease. Dr Debprasad Chattopadhyay, virologist and director, ICMR-NITM, told The Economic Times that those who have recovered are already immune and vaccination is not necessary for them.

There are other scientific experts who say that people who are only mildly ill, as is the case with large number of COVID-19 cases, the immune protection may wane within a few months, possibly putting them at a risk of re-infection.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the independent committee that advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been much more clear on this. While advising on clinical considerations for use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine it recommends on giving COVID-19 vaccine to persons regardless of history of prior symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.

It says that the data from phase 2/3 clinical trials suggest vaccination is safe and likely efficacious in these persons, and recommends against viral or serologic testing for acute or prior infection, for the purpose of vaccine decision-making.

But ACIP says that people who had not been infected should get priority over those who contracted the virus in the past 90 days.

The Indian government says that person with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection may increase the risk of spreading the same to others at vaccination site.

For this reason, infected individuals should defer vaccination for 14 days after symptom resolution.