New research suggests that antibodies the immune system makes to fight the new coronavirus may only last a few months in people with mild illness, but that doesn't mean protection also is gone or that it won't be possible to develop an effective vaccine.
"Infection with this coronavirus does not necessarily generate lifetime immunity," but antibodies are only part of the story, said Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. He had no role in the work, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Otto Yang and others at the University of California, Los Angeles, measured these more precise antibodies in 30 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and four housemates presumed to have the disease. Their average age was 43 and most had mild symptoms. The results "call for caution regarding antibody-based `immunity passports,' herd immunity, and perhaps vaccine durability," the California authors write.
"They would get called into action very quickly when there's a new exposure to the virus. It's as if they lie dormant, just waiting," he said.
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