Some scientists have advocated to vaccinate even those persons who have naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2. They have provided following reasons to vaccinate such persons:
- A small minority of those with even symptomatic infection do not end up making high levels of antibodies.
- Another small minority of such naturally infected people do not make long-lasting antibodies.
- While highest levels of binding antibodies are seen in people with the most severe disease, asymptomatic infections may result in low antibody levels or even no antibodies being measured in up to 20% of people.
- Immune responses in vaccinated people are still being studied, particularly to understand what is protective and how long protection lasts.
- Variation in vaccine-generated immune responses is likely to be less than that in natural infection.
- Large-scale genome sequencing studies have not been undertaken to categorically say reinfections have been just a handful.
- So far, there are no reports of any harm of vaccination.
- If vaccination is to be done selectively, the bigger issue is of testing people for antibodies prior to vaccination. This raises several challenges — increased cost and time, logistics and manpower.
(Source: The Hindu)
