A Hempfield Republican is seeking support for a state bill that would exempt people who have been infected with covid-19 from employer mandates requiring covid vaccines and booster shots.

State Rep. Eric Nelson, R-Hempfield, said he intends to introduce a bill in February that would allow workers with natural immunity to avoid workplace mandates if they can prove they have sufficient antibodies through a blood test conducted by a state-certified lab.

“This (bill) is to ensure we can return to having a viable workforce,” Nelson said. “(Natural immunity) is an additional component to establishing herd immunity.”

Under the proposed natural immunity exemption bill, employees would have a 90-day exemption from any mandated covid vaccines if their antibodies are above a certain threshold.

Employees and job seekers who get an exemption under the bill but cannot prove that they continue to have natural immunity would then have 30 days to seek a religious or medical exemption before deciding if they want to comply with an employer’s vaccine mandate, Nelson said.

The problem is determining at which level of antibodies that people are protected.

“We don’t know that yet,” said Pittsburgh-based Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and critical care and emergency medicine physician. “Immunity is not just antibodies. That is just one arm of the immune system. T-cells are equally important.”

That group of immune cells can target and destroy virus-infected cells. They also are more difficult to measure, he said.

Adalja said people who have survived a covid infection certainly have immunity protections, but it remains unclear how long that lasts.

But being infected with covid and being vaccinated offers the best protection, giving people hybrid immunity through vaccine antibodies and natural antibodies, he said.

“People with hybrid immunity are among some of the most protected,” Adalja said.

On Wednesday, the CDC reported that research showed being infected with the delta variant provided stronger protection to people than did vaccination.

The new research, included in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, analyzed among more than 1.1 million adult covid in California and New York from May to November — a period before the widespread availability of booster shots and the current surge caused by the omicron variant.

“These findings cannot be generalized to the current omicron wave,” the New York Times quoted Benjamin Silk, an epidemiologist at the CDC, as saying. “It’d be like comparing apples and oranges.”

Omicron has changed the discussion, “as it can walk right over protections of natural infection and vaccines,” Adalja said.

Fully vaccinated people are still highly likely to survive and not require hospitalization if infected, he said.

And that’s where Adalja said the discourse should be focused — on keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed and keeping people alive.

He thinks a sound policy would be to require people who have had prior infections to get one dose of a vaccine to be considered fully vaccinated.

Nelson said his proposed bill is modeled after the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s recommended policy, as well as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The proposal calls for the bill, if passed, to expire after five years.

“It gives us a chance to include antibodies as part of the conversation” in the fight against covid, Nelson said.

Nelson said he has heard from dozens of constituents who have recovered from covid and have antibodies, yet have lost their job or remain concerned about losing their jobs if they are not vaccinated.

At this time, there is not a companion piece of legislation in the GOP-controlled Senate. Nelson said he hopes that there is just one piece of legislation on the issue, so there is not a need for a reconciliation.

Jason Cato contributed to this report.

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