COVID-19 vaccination boosts the potency and breadth of the immune response against SARS-CoV-2 among recovered patients in Wuhan

The immunity of patients who recover from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) could be long lasting but persist at a lower level. Thus, recovered patients still need to be vaccinated to prevent reinfection by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or its mutated variants. Here, we report that the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine can stimulate immunity in recovered patients to maintain high levels of anti-nucleoprotein binding domain (RBD) and anti-nucleocapsid protein (NP) antibody titers within 9 months, and high neutralizing activity against the prototype, Delta, and Omicron variant was observed. Nevertheless, the humoral response decreased over time, and the omicron variant exhibited more pronounced resistance to neutralization than the prototype and Delta strains. Moreover, the intensity of the SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cell responses was also increased in recovered patients who received COVID-19 vaccines. Overall, the repeated antigen exposure proved by inactivated COVID-19 vaccination greatly boosted both the potency and breadth of the humoral and cellular immune responses against SARS-CoV-2, effectively protecting recovered individuals from reinfection by circulating SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.

Hong Liang, Xuanxuan Nian, Junzheng Wu, Dong Liu, Lu Feng, Jia Lu, Yan Peng, Zhijun Zhou, Tao Deng, Jing Liu, Deming Ji, Ran Qi, Lianzhen Lin, Yan Zeng, Fei Xia, Yong Hu, Taojing Li, Kai Duan, Xingou Li, Zejun Wang, Yong Zhang, Huang Zhang, Chen Zhu, Shang Wang, Xiao Wu, Xiang Wang, Yuwei Li, Shihe Huang, Min Mao, Huanhuan Guo, Yunkai Yang, Rui Jia, Jingwei Xufang, Xuewei Wang, Shuyan Liang, Zhixin Qiu, Juan Zhang, Yaling Ding, Chunyan Li, Jin Zhang, Daoxing Fu, Yanlin He, Dongbo Zhou, Cesheng Li, Jiayou Zhang, Xiao-Ming Yang