» If you’ve had the coronavirus already and recovered, should you get the vaccine? Yes, experts say,

But those in low-risk group for COVID-19 could defer to others.

Research suggests that most people who recover from COVID19 are immune for at least eight months, but epidemiologists are mostly still urging this population to get the vaccine if it’s their turn in line.

Official guidance says vaccines should be offered regardless of whether people were previously infected. That’s per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also says the vaccine is safe for people who have had a previous infection.

Former CDC Director Thomas Frieden said he would advise most people to get the vaccine, even if they’ve had COVID-19.

But Frieden added that he doesn’t think it’s wrong for someone in a low-risk group who has had the illness to defer if he or she thinks someone else could use the dose. One health system asked workers to do just that, Frieden recently noted on Twitter.

The limits on vaccine supply bolster the argument that recovered people should let others go first.

As administration of the vaccine encounters bottlenecks across the country, the pressure is on to get the shots in as many arms as quickly as possible.

Researchers at the University of Colorado found that prioritizing people who don’t already have natural immunity could allow health officials to get more impact from limited supplies, especially in areas where many people have been infected, according to a modeling study that has not been peer-reviewed.

The researchers found that you would need to vaccinate 1 in 5 elderly people in New York to bring death rates down by 73%. But you can get the same result vaccinating only 1 in 6 people if you prioritize those who don’t already have antibodies to the virus, according to Kate Bubar, a PHD student in applied mathematics and quantitative biology, who co-authored the study.

And though a previous COVID19 infection isn’t a guarantee of immunity, it’s pretty good protection on its own. Researchers have found that eight months after infection, about 90% of patients show lingering, stable immunity.

Still, risk can vary from person to person.

“If I were over 70 or otherwise ill, I would certainly take the vaccine even if I’d had COVID-19. If I were 30 and healthy, I should not be getting it now (unless a health care worker), but if for some reason I did get offered it, I would probably decline,” Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease specialist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an email.

Some epidemiologists worry about the logistics of trying to weed out people with natural immunity.

That could complicate the process as health providers are already struggling to get the vaccine distributed quickly. As of Friday, about 10.6 million people had received one dose of the vaccine, even though 31.2 million doses had been distributed, according to a Washington Post analysis.