'Hypervaccinated' man gets 217 COVID-19 jabs for 'private reasons'
A 'hyper-vaccinated' German man—who received 217 COVID-19 vaccine jabs over 29 months—has been declared free of any side effects. A recent study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal revealed that the shots did not affect his immune system at all. The 62-year-old man piqued the interest of researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg who decided to investigate the man's immune response to different coronavirus vaccines.
Why does this story matter?
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends three shots—two regular and one booster—of any authorized coronavirus vaccine. It states that the emergency phase of COVID-19 is over, but the virus continues to spread and endanger people's lives. It adds that there is vaccine inequity in the world with richer countries procuring the majority of jabs. Echoing this divide, the German man in question got himself jabbed 217 times, for reasons he said were "private."
German authorities opened fraud investigation
The peculiar case attracted the attention of researchers after German prosecutors opened up a fraud investigation against the man for procuring 130 jabs in nine months. No criminal charges were pressed against him. They then invited the man for research, and he, with utmost interest, agreed to provide blood samples from the past and present. Researchers concluded that all COVID-19 vaccines have a "good degree of tolerability," although they noted that it was an isolated case of "extraordinary hypervaccination."
Researchers found no signs of exhaustion in his immune cells
Dr. Kilian Schober and his team at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg analyzed the man's blood and saliva samples and found no signs of harm or exhaustion in his immune cells due to excessive vaccinations. However, the researchers stated that they don't "endorse hyper-vaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity." They recommend a three-dose vaccination, along with regular booster shots for vulnerable groups, as the preferred approach.
Finding contradicts hypothesis about T-Cells
This finding contradicts the hypothesis that excessive COVID-19 vaccine doses could weaken the immune system. Vaccines create immune memory cells that are on standby, ready to rapidly activate the body's defenses in the event of an infection. But in this case, the researchers found that the man had more of these immune cells — known as T-cells — than a control group that had received the standard three-dose vaccine regimen.