Coronavirus tests that can reveal who has already recovered will become available in “a week or so,” Fauci says, so those people could go back to work first.
Wrong, because immunity.after recovering from the virus may not last very long.
According to recent research from Spain suggests that antibodies disappear in some patients in a matter of weeks.
Among the many lingering questions about the coronavirus, one of the most crucial is: How long do antibodies last?
With some diseases, like measles and hepatitis A, infection is a one-and-done deal. Once you get sick and recover, you’re immune for life.
“For human coronaviruses, that’s not the case,” Florian Krammer, a vaccinologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Business Insider. “You can get repeatedly infected once your immunity goes down.”
Increasingly, research is starting to coalesce around an unfortunate picture of COVID-19 immunity: People who develop antibodies might not keep them for very long.
Last month, a study showed that antibodies may last only two to three months. Then research published Monday suggested that antibodies could last only three to five weeks in some patients.
Such findings have implications for vaccine development, since the efficacy of a vaccine hinges on the idea that a dose of weakened or dead virus can prompt your body to generate antibodies that protect you from future infection. If those antibodies are fleeting, a vaccine’s protection would be fleeting too.
Short-lived antibodies also diminish hopes of achieving widespread or permanent herd immunity. Coronavirus herd immunity may be ‘unachievable’ after studies in Spain show antibodies disappear after weeks in some people.
A new study has found that Coronavirus antibodies may disappear 2 to 3 months after people recover.
People who develop coronavirus-fighting antibodies might not keep them very long, especially those who didn’t have symptoms.
After only a few months, recovered coronavirus patients may rapidly lose antibodies, the key blood proteins that fight off the virus and can prevent reinfection, according to a study published in the journal Nature Medicine. The finding raises new questions about the idea of immunity passports and could be cause for concern about the development of an effective vaccine, especially since, so far, no vaccine for any of the corona virus has been able to be developed.
The researchers tested for antibodies in 37 people who had fallen ill and recovered from the virus in the Wanzhou district of China. They also tested 37 others who had tested positive for the virus but never showed symptoms.
For many of the participants in the Wanzhou study, however, antibodies only seemed to last a couple months. About eight weeks after recovery antibodies dropped to undetectable levels in 40% of the asymptomatic people and in 13% of those who had more severe symptoms.
After just eight weeks, IgG levels had declined in all but three of the people who started out with detectable levels. The drop was steep: a median decrease of 71% for the asymptomatic group and 76% for the symptomatic group. Some participants no longer had detectable IgG at all. The symptomatic people started out with “significantly higher” levels, according to the research.
Other coronaviruses — the kind that cause common cold — produce immunity that lasts less than a year, and in some cases just a few months.
“It may be completely different with this coronavirus,” Fauci said. “We don’t know.”
With some diseases, like measles and hepatitis A, infection is a one-and-done deal. Once you get sick and recover, you’re immune for life.
“For human coronaviruses, that’s not the case,” Florian Krammer, a vaccinologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Business Insider. “You can get repeatedly infected once your immunity goes down.”
Increasingly, research is starting to coalesce around an unfortunate picture of COVID-19 immunity: People who develop antibodies might not keep them for very long.
Such findings have implications for vaccine development, since the efficacy of a vaccine hinges on the idea that a dose of weakened or dead virus can prompt your body to generate antibodies that protect you from future infection. If those antibodies are fleeting, a vaccine’s protection would be fleeting too.
Short-lived antibodies also diminish hopes of achieving widespread or permanent herd immunity.
There is a chance, however slim, that the COVID-19 pandemic may be with us for a long time and, perhaps, forever.