COVID-19 Fallout: Immunity From Antibodies May Not Last Long, Says UK Study

Being infected with COVID-19 once and recovering thereafter does not make a person immune to the virus again. This is because the natural immunity of those infected to the virus could decline within months, a new pre-print paper has suggested.

Quoting the paper, released on the medical server medrxiv.org on Saturday, CNN Health reported that antibody responses may start to decline 20 to 30 days after COVID-19 symptoms emerge. The paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Antibodies are the proteins the body makes to fight infection.

“We show that IgM and IgA binding responses decline after 20-30 days,” the researchers from institutions in the United Kingdom wrote in the paper, which also found that the severity of COVID-19 symptoms can determine the magnitude of the antibody response, reported CNN Health.

In general, it can take one to three weeks after infection for your body to make antibodies, according to the US Centres For Disease Control and Prevention.

It may be recalled that the World Health Organisation has been reiterating that people who have had COVID-19 are not necessarily immune from getting the virus again.

The new paper adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that natural immunity to COVID-19 with antibodies may not last as long as hoped and that the level of severity of the initial coronavirus infection can be linked to the magnitude of antibody response.

Even though it has yet to be peer-reviewed, “the importance of this study is clear and the research has been rigorously undertaken,” Stephen Griffins, Associate Professor in the University of Leeds School of Medicine in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the new study, said in a written statement distributed by the UK-based Science Media Centre on Monday, reported CNN Health.