What #COVID-19 #Reinfection Means for Vaccines - Scientific American
▻https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-covid-19-reinfection-means-for-vaccines
Thanks to months of intensive research, we now have a relatively clear picture of the antibody response triggered specifically by #SARS-CoV-2. Those who are asymptomatic produce low—sometimes even undetectable—levels of antibodies, even when the virus has been cleared. For the most part, studies show that concentrations of these antibodies diminish rapidly, suggesting that asymptomatic individuals may be the most susceptible to reinfection. Those who fall ill, and particularly those who fall seriously ill, produce greater amounts of antibodies that persist for longer amounts of time—an outcome that would seem, upon first glance , to offer greater protection, too.
The Kenya study [▻https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/217/11/1728/4948258] on endemic human coronaviruses, however, offers evidence to the contrary that may turn out to be applicable to SARS-CoV-2. In some patients, it was found that high antibody levels actually potentiated infection rather than preventing or mitigating it—