People who develop immunity against the coronavirus virus enjoy long-term protection against the disease, researchers in Australia concluded, suggesting that vaccines can be effective for long periods of time.
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Melbourne’s Monash University announced that a team of researchers has found that the antibodies protect against reinfection for at least eight months. His article, published in the journal Science Immunology, is the “Stronger evidence” still, coronavirus vaccines can be a viable solution to the health crisis, the university said. Previous studies have suggested that antibodies to Covid-19 begin to disappear within several weeks or months. However, new Australian research shows that specific immune cells, called memory B cells, “remember” virus infection and triggers a protective immune response by producing antibodies if new exposure occurs.
The study examined 25 patients with Covid-19, taking 36 blood samples from them, starting four days after infection. The last samples were collected 242 days after infection. The researchers saw that antibodies against the virus began to decrease after 20 days after infection, but found that memory B cells specific for the Covid-19 virus remained stable for at least eight months.
The results are good news for vaccine efficacy and also help explain why there were so few examples of people being reinfected by the virus, said associate professor Menno van Zelm, from the Department of Immunology and Pathology at Monash University.
This has been a black cloud hovering over the potential protection that could be provided by any COVID-19 vaccine and gives real hope that, once a vaccine or vaccines are developed, they will provide long-term protection.
Although there is a wide range of vaccines against coronavirus that have been shown to be effective in building immunity against the virus, it is not yet clear how long the protection lasts. However, vaccines will also have to keep pace with mutations in the virus. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said earlier this week that the German company would soon have a coup to fight a new strain of Covid-19 that appeared in the UK, but expressed confidence that the current vaccine developed with the American company Pfizer will still be effective for the time being. The homemade Russian Sputnik V vaccine is also effective against the new strain of coronavirus, according to Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which financed the development of the jab.
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