Immunity to the #Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/health/coronavirus-immunity.html
The research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date.
“That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study.
The findings are likely to come as a relief to experts worried that immunity to the virus might be short-lived, and that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control.
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A study published last week also found that people who have recovered from #Covid-19 have powerful and protective killer immune cells even when antibodies are not detectable .
These studies “are all by and large painting the same picture, which is that once you get past those first few critical weeks, the rest of the response looks pretty conventional,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona.
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, said she was not surprised that the body mounts a long-lasting response because “that’s what is supposed to happen.” Still, she was heartened by the research: “This is exciting news.”
Sources :
Immunological memory to #SARS-CoV-2 assessed for greater than six months after infection | bioRxiv
▻https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383323v1
Characterization of pre-existing and induced SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8 + T cells | Nature Medicine
▻https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01143-2
