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.