TAMPA, Fla. — Maybe you're thinking you don't need to get a vaccine because you've already had COVID. We wanted to give you a sharper insight into why experts say you actually should get the shot.
A paper just published in Science Immunology showed people who had previous infection with COVID had low levels of antibodies, but if they got the vaccine, now they have the same levels of antibodies that you get from vaccination.
We talked with Dr. Michael Teng at USF Health about this. He says if you want to be protected against re-infection, then you want to get the vaccine, regardless if you've already had the virus.
"When you get covid, you do get antibodies to the virus, but depending on your infection and actually depending on the person, you have varying levels of antibody protection against future infection. So it's not always guaranteed that just because you've recovered from covid that you're going to have that high level of protection and subsequent reinfection," Dr. Teng said.
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