Earlier this week, Capital Tonight aired a segment featuring a Rochester nurse who is opting not to be vaccinated because, she said, she had COVID-19 in the past and therefore has “natural antibodies.”
Capital Tonight asked Dr. Tom Russo, an epidemiologist and chief of Infectious Disease at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, if the nurse still needs to receive a vaccine.
“The short answer is yes,” Dr. Russo said. “As health care providers, we want to have the maximal degree of protection against getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the agent that causes COVID.”
Dr. Russo explained that with even asymptomatic infection or mild infection, a nurse can put patients at risk if they’re vaccinated against COVID.
He explained that natural infection results in variable and unpredictable degrees of infection.
“Particularly, if an individual had asymptomatic infection, a mild infection or was infected during the earlier phases of this pandemic,” he explained. “At this point, that protection is waning.”
According to Dr. Russo, anyone who has been infected by COVID has, for a few months, a natural degree of protection.
“But we are just not sure how good it is,” he said. “We don’t have a laboratory test that we can do that says, ‘yeah, you’re great, you don’t have to worry about the delta variant.’”
The doctor reminded viewers that the delta variant is more resistant to antibodies; therefore the best way to protect yourself is by receiving a vaccine, whether you’ve contracted COVID in the past or not.