Vaccinated people who were infected by the first omicron subvariants have four times greater protection than vaccinated people who were not infected. These results are part of a study that will be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was led by Luís Graça, group leader at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM) and Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, and by Manuel Carmo Gomes, Associate Professor with Aggregation at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa). Both researchers are members of the Technical Commission on Vaccination against COVID-19 (CTVC) of the Direção Geral de Saúde (DGS).

This is one of the first studies worldwide to analyze the probability of becoming infected with the subvariant currently in circulation in vaccinated people, by estimating the degree of protection conferred by infections with previous variants and using real-world data.

"Vaccinated people who were infected by omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2 have a protection against infection with subvariant BA.5, in circulation since June, about four times greater than vaccinated people who were not infected at any time," says Luís Graça, co-leader of the study.

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