Fact Check: Did Study Find COVID Infection Just as Effective as Vaccine?

COVID and vaccine response continues to hold considerable sway over U.S. policy and decision-making, with the White House recently redeclaring emergency government powers in response to the disease.

Now, a recent study, which has been quoted by conservative commentators, has suggested that a COVID infection is just as effective as receiving a vaccine.

A tweet by user Natalie F. Danelishen, posted on February 17, 2023, viewed more than 496,000 times, included a screengrab from an NBC News article with the headline: "Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds.”

The question of whether COVID vaccinations are as powerful at resisting symptoms of the disease versus protection provided by natural infection has been debated for some time.

During the pandemic, studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that unvaccinated COVID survivors were twice as likely to get reinfected and that vaccines offered five times more protection than immunity from catching the virus.

"Hybrid immunity," whereby an individual boosts immunity to COVID through infection and vaccination, has been recognized by the World Health Organization as "Superior to infection- or vaccine induced immunity alone.”

The study referred to by NBC and published in The Lancet was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, and analyzed 65 studies from 19 different countries, assessing protection from SARS-Cov-2 conferred by a previous infection.

"Among its findings, the study found that"although protection from past infection wanes over time, the level of protection against re-infection, symptomatic disease, and severe disease appears to be at least as durable, if not more so, than that provided by two-dose vaccination with the mRNA vaccines for ancestral, alpha, delta, and omicron BA.1 variants… which is also seen from studies directly comparing natural immunity to vaccine-induced protection.

As the study added, while infection may be as effective as the vaccine, there are other risks associated with infection-acquired immunity.

Multiple studies have confirmed that the risk of death from COVID is far higher among those who remain unvaccinated compared to those who received the vaccine.

As noted by NBC News, the study excluded people with hybrid immunity, or immunity from both infection and vaccination, while variants from late fall and early winter of 2022 weren't included either.

While a recent study that analyzed multiple data found that COVID infection had provided protection from re-infection, symptomatic disease, and severe disease compared to a double vaccination dosage, the vital context is that there are health risks associated with remaining unvaccinated.