With thousands of people getting infected with mild COVID-19 forms every day, there’s even a positive side to this scenario. While a lot of people get into panic with such a diagnosis, the antibodies that the patients develop after infection will protect them from further reinfection for a significant amount of time. Of course, the condition is to recover from the illness.
Our bodies are naturally programmed to develop antibodies for many illnesses that made them sick. It’s also available for COVID-19, and a new article from ScienceDaily.com sheds light on how long immunity lasts.
Antibodies could persist for a lifetime
In the case of those who had been infected with mild COVID-19, the immune cells from their bodies could continue producing antibodies for the coronavirus even for a lifetime. The stunning conclusion belongs to scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine from St. Louis.
Ali Ellebedy, the main author of the study, PhD, and an associate professor of pathology & immunology, medicine and molecular microbiology, declared:
Last fall, there were reports that antibodies wane quickly after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and mainstream media interpreted that to mean that immunity was not long-lived.
The scientist continued by saying:
But that’s a misinterpretation of the data. It’s normal for antibody levels to go down after acute infection, but they don’t go down to zero; they plateau. Here, we found antibody-producing cells in people 11 months after first symptoms. These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity.
Ellebedy also pointed out that people who had mild forms of COVID will clear the coronavirus from their bodies from two to three weeks after infection. Therefore, there would be no virus driving an active immune response at seven or 11 months after the infection.
The findings were published in the journal Nature.
