glossary of terms

Glossary of Terms

Natural immunity: Immunity that is acquired by getting infected and recovering, but without vaccination.

Vaccine-induced immunity: Immunity that is acquired by getting vaccinated, but without previous infection.

Naive: A person who has been neither infected nor vaccinated. They have no acquired immunity to the virus (except perhaps some cross-immunity from related viruses, e.g. possibly common cold coronaviruses and/or SARS-1)

Convalescent: A person who was infected and then recovered.

Re-infection: A subsequent infection in a convalescent person.

Breakthrough infection: A subsequent infection in a vaccinated person.

Ancestral variant: The original SARS-CoV-2 variant that emerged in Wuhan.

VOCs (Variants Of Concern): Currently circulating new variants and potential future variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Vaccinee(s): A person (or persons) who have been vaccinated.

BNT162b2: The Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine

Sterilizing immunity: The most complete “best” kind of immunity. As well as preventing serious symptoms, sterilizing immunity prevents infection and transmission. Thus far, all covid vaccines do not produce sterilizing immunity.

Neutralizing antibody: An antibody that, in sufficient quantity, stops all pathological effects of a virus. Not all antibodies that bind to a virus particle are neutralizing.

Antibody titers: the concentration of antibodies circulating in the blood.

Antigen: a viral fragment (oversimplified).