A German man seems to be no worse for wear after having allegedly gotten more than 200 covid-19 vaccine doses. In a new study out this week, scientists examined the man’s blood and saliva and found no evidence that the “hypervaccination” he went through harmed his immune response to covid-19 or his general health. If anything, the repeated shots might have made the man less vulnerable to covid-19 infection, though no one should follow in his footsteps.
The man’s vaccine shenanigans were first reported by German authorities in spring 2022. That March, he was caught receiving a covid-19 shot at the same vaccination center in the state of Saxony two days in a row. The police alleged at the time that the man—only described as a resident of the city of Magdeburg in his 60s—had been getting extra shots to secure legitimate information (the vaccine batch numbers) for fake vaccination cards that would then be sold to people unwilling to get vaccinated themselves.
Local prosecutors did open an investigation into the man for alleged fraud, but ultimately declined to pursue criminal charges. Researchers at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg and the University Hospital Erlangen heard about his story from news reports and decided to reach out and ask if they could examine him; the man readily agreed. The team’s subsequent paper on the unusual case was published this Monday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Before their investigation closed, prosecutors determined that the man had received at least 130 covid-19 vaccinations over a nine-month period. The researchers found documentation of 108 shots, some of which overlapped with those found by the authorities. But the man claims that he had actually gotten 217 vaccinations over the course of 29 months. These shots were obtained from various types of vaccines, though the majority were mRNA vaccines.
During those years, the man underwent several blood tests. He granted the researchers access to his medical records and stored samples, as well as let them take new samples of his blood and saliva. He also, “at his own insistence,” got two more vaccinations while the study was ongoing, allowing the researchers to document his immune response afterward.
Throughout all of this, the man reported no vaccine-related side effects. And when the researchers compared his samples to controls (people who had gotten three mRNA doses), they found no apparent negative effects from his hundreds of vaccinations, and possibly even some positive ones.
The team found no evidence that his immune response to other germs was impaired, for instance. The man’s quantity of antibodies and T-cells specific to the spike protein of the coronavirus were also higher than controls, sometimes substantially, while only he appeared to have anti-spike antibodies lingering in his saliva. And though there has been some theoretical concern that repeated vaccinations against covid-19 over too short a time period might weaken a person’s response to the latest vaccine, the team found that he still experienced a modest boost in immunity after the 217th shot. Perhaps the most tantalizing finding is that the man has seemingly never caught covid-19, with two dozen tests taken over the years having all come up negative so far.
“The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability,” said study author Kilian Schober in a statement from the university.
The authors note that they can’t definitively prove that the man has remained covid-free as a result of his unusual habit. And at the end of the day, this is just a single case. We also know that vaccines can cause rare but sometimes severe complications, even if the benefits of covid-19 vaccination vastly outweigh the possible risks.
Luckily for the rest of us, plenty of data has shown that we don’t need 200-plus shots to get those benefits.
“Current research indicates that a three dose vaccination, coupled with regular top-up vaccines for vulnerable groups, remains the favored approach. There is no indication that more vaccines are required,” said Schober.
