Recovering from Covid offers just as good protection as getting two doses of any vaccine, official figures suggest. .

An Office for National Statistics' (ONS) report published today found unvaccinated Britons who catch the Delta variant are around 71 per cent less likely to test positive for a second time.

It estimated the risk of infection is slashed by approximately 67 per cent in people given two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca's jabs.

Using a statistical analysis, the report found those who were double-jabbed had a reduced the risk of testing positive by between 64 and 70 per cent, giving the headline figure of 67 per cent.

In people who were unvaccinated but previously positive, the risk was cut by between 65 per cent to 77 per cent. .

Writing in the report, the ONS said: 'There was no evidence that the reduction in risk of infection from two vaccine doses differed from that of previous natural infection.' .

But critics of the Government's decision to vaccinate healthy school pupils as young as 12 have argued that natural immunity is better for children because it removes the small risk of side effects from the jabs

At that time, double-vaccination cut the risk of testing positive for the virus by 79 per cent

Sarah Crofts, the head of analysis for the Covid infection survey, said in a blog post that the drop in vaccine protection between the two recording periods was likely down to waning of vaccine immunity

'Additionally, when we estimate the risk of infection among vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated people, we need test results from each group of people

Department of Health data suggests some 45.3million people — or more than nine in ten adults — have already received two doses of the Covid vaccine

A study in Israel published last month found that unvaccinated people with natural immunity were 13 times less likely to catch Covid than double-jabbed people who had never been exposed to the virus before

However, experts at King's College London found that people with two vaccines enjoy up to 80 per cent protection against infection compared to just 65 per cent in the natural immunity group