Covid, Gismondo: “Natural immunity is always better than old vaccines”

Whether or not herd immunity remains a utopia against Covid-19, “it is not possible to predict it now”, because “it will depend on future mutations of the virus. And in any case, natural immunity will always be higher than that conferred by old vaccines” . So at Adnkronos Salute Maria Rita Gismondo, director of the Laboratory of clinical microbiology, virology and diagnostics of bioemergencies at the Sacco hospital in Milan. “This virus is still to be discovered” in the evolutions it will have, the expert said. But “we – she adds – we can always look at the history of the pandemics, which ended only when the virus spread, immunity was created and most of the population found themselves protected”. It is precisely in the hope that history will repeat itself that “I believe – reiterates the microbiologist – that in this phase in which Sars-CoV-2 is spreading so significantly, we can expect that the population will remain immune and that the pandemic can end. I repeat – Gismondo is keen to specify – it is an expert’s thinking based on what is the knowledge and what is the history of pandemics. If this virus behaves differently, I certainly cannot predict it “.