But the benefit of vaccines in reducing Omicron transmission doesn’t last for long.
Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty
The findings are good news, says Megan Steain, a virologist at the University of Sydney, Australia. They show that the more exposure people have to the virus, whether through vaccines, boosters or infections, the “higher the wall of immunity”, she says. “If we can keep high levels of booster vaccinations up, then we can decrease how infectious people are when they’re sick,” says Steain.
The team found that among individuals with COVID-19, those who received at least one vaccine shot were 24% less likely to infect close contacts— in this case cellmates — compared with unvaccinated prisoners.
Prisoners were isolated after they tested positive, but close contacts had usually been exposed for around 2 days before the COVID-positive individual was isolated, says Lo. Unvaccinated people had a 36% chance of transmitting the virus to close contacts but prisoners who were vaccinated and had a prior infection still had a 20% risk of spreading the infection.Steain says the findings accord with what researchers know about the virus so far.
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