Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic continues, and evidence on infection- and vaccine-induced immunity is key. We assessed COVID-19 immunity and the neutralizing antibody response to virus variants across age groups in the Swiss population.
Study design: We conducted a cohort study in representative community-dwelling residents aged five years or older in southern Switzerland (total population 353,343), and we collected blood samples in July 2020 (in adults only, N = 646), November-December 2020 (N = 1457), and June-July 2021 (N = 885).
Methods: We used a previously validated Luminex assay to measure antibodies targeting the spike (S) and the nucleocapsid (N) proteins of the virus and a high-throughput cell-free neutralization assay optimized for multiple spike protein variants. We calculated seroprevalence with a Bayesian logistic regression model accounting for the population's sociodemographic structure and the test performance, and we compared the neutralizing activity between vaccinated and convalescent participants across virus variants.
Results: The overall seroprevalence was 7.8% (95% CI: 5.4-10.4) by July 2020 and 20.2% (16.4-24.4) by December 2020. By July 2021, the overall seroprevalence increased substantially to 72.5% (69.1-76.4), with the highest estimates of 95.6% (92.8-97.8) among older adults, who developed up to 10.3 more antibodies via vaccination than after infection compared to 3.7 times more in adults. The neutralizing activity was significantly higher for vaccine-induced than infection-induced antibodies for all virus variants (all p values < 0.037).
Conclusions: Vaccination chiefly contributed to the reduction in immunonaive individuals, particularly those in older age groups. Our findings on the greater neutralizing activity of vaccine-induced antibodies than infection-induced antibodies are greatly informative for future vaccination campaigns.
Keywords: COVID-19; acquired immunity; antibodies; cohort study; seroprevalence; vaccination.