Two new studies point to a major win in humanity’s fight against COVID-19: immunity to the coronavirus lasts at least a year and possibly a lifetime. The findings should allay fears that protection from vaccines or a previous infection are fleeting. They also suggest that previously infected COVID-19 patients receive tremendous benefits from a vaccine.
“The papers are consistent with the growing body of literature that suggests that immunity elicited by infection and vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 appears to be long-lived,” Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times.
The New York Times reports that “most people who were both infected with COVID-19 and then inoculated with one of the vaccines “will not need boosters.” However, “vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need [a booster shot].”
Ali Ellebedy of Washington University in St. Louis, who led the study published online at the biology research platform BioRxiv, told The New York Times that the findings reinforce the idea that people who have recovered from Covid-19 should be vaccinated.
Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York who led the study published in Nature, agrees. From The New York Times:
The results of Dr. Nussenzweig’s study suggest that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who have later been vaccinated will continue to have extremely high levels of protection against emerging variants, even without receiving a vaccine booster down the line.
Nussenzweig’s study found that that cells in bone marrow retain a memory of the virus and may be able to produce antibodies when needed.
Ellebedy’s work suggests that B cells – which contain the memory of the virus – strengthen overtime.
On Wednesday, ABC News reported that an “independent group of scientists, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Processes, will meet and make a recommendation to CDC on booster shots, in the same way it has done with previously authorized coronavirus vaccines.” Several pharmaceutical companies, including Moderna and Pfizer, are working on potential booster shots if they are needed.
Appearing before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, American’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, said a booster shot is likely required but the timing is unclear. “I don’t anticipate that the durability of the vaccine protection is going to be infinite. It’s just not. So I would imagine we will need, at some time, a booster.”
