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July 18, 2020 05:19 pm

Covid-19 Immunity From Antibodies May Last Only Months, New Study Suggests

CNN shares some bad news. "After people are infected with the novel coronavirus, their natural immunity to the virus could decline within months, a new pre-print paper suggests." The paper was co-authored by 37 researchers from seven different institutions:The paper, released on the medical server medrxiv.org on Saturday and not yet published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, suggests that antibody responses may start to decline 20 to 30 days after Covid-19 symptoms emerge. Antibodies are the proteins the body makes to fight infection... Since early on in the pandemic, the World Health Organization has warned that people who have had Covid-19 are not necessarily immune from getting the virus again. Yet the new study had some limitations, including that more research is needed to determine whether similar results would emerge among a larger group of patients and what data could show over longer periods of time when it comes to infection with the coronavirus... "The report is the latest in a growing chain of evidence that immunity to COVID-19 is short-lived," reports the San Francisco Chronicle:A Chinese study published June 18 in the journal Nature Medicine also showed coronavirus antibodies taking a nosedive. The study of 74 patients, conducted by Chongqing Medical University, a branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that more than 90% exhibited sharp declines in the number of antibodies within two to three months after infection... Studies of four seasonal coronaviruses that cause colds show that although people develop antibodies, the immune response declines over time and people become susceptible again. Scientists suspect that the severity of cold symptoms is reduced by previous infections. The Chronicle reports this new information suggests two implications:"Waning antibodies affect vaccine development," said Shannon Bennett, the chief of science at San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. "Where natural immunity doesn't really develop or last, then vaccine programs are not likely to be easily successful or achievable..." The Chronicle adds, "Whatever happens, epidemiologists hope the recent reports about antibody viability put to rest the concept embraced by many young people of herd immunity, where the disease can't find any more victims because so many people have survived infections and must be immune. 'This attitude that if I go out there and just get exposed — get it over with — then I'll be immune is a dangerous presumption,' Bennett said. Now more than ever."

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