Study: People who have recovered from coronavirus retain durab | Dr Naomi R Wolf

Study: People who have recovered from coronavirus retain durable immunity to the disease

An Emory University study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine found that most people who have recovered from coronavirus (COVID-19) retain a broad and durable immunity to the disease, including some degree of protection against its variants.

Rafi Ahmed, the lead author of the paper, said that the findings disproved early reports during the pandemic that protective neutralizing antibodies did not last in COVID-19 patients.

“The study serves as a framework to define and predict long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection. We also saw indications in this phase that natural immunity could continue to persist,” Ahmed said. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

After people recover from infection with a virus, the immune system retains a memory of it. Immune cells and proteins that circulate in the body can recognize and kill the pathogen if it’s encountered again, protecting against disease and reducing illness severity.

The study involved 254 COVID-19 patients between 18 to 82 years old, who provided blood samples at various points for a period of over eight months beginning April last year. About 71 percent of the patients had mild disease, 24 percent experienced moderate illness, and five percent had severe disease.

Ahmed and his team found that most of the patients who recovered mounted a strong and wide-ranging immune response to the virus for at least the 250-day duration of the study. (Related: Study: 2 in 3 Indians have natural immunity against coronavirus, meaning “herd immunity” is already achieved. https://t.me/naomirwolf/155 )

“We saw that antibody responses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast majority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated, which suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,” said Ahmed.

COVID-19 recovered patients may also be protected against variants and other coronaviruses

The authors said that the natural immunity after recovery from the disease offered some degree of protection against variants. Meanwhile, some studies suggest that COVID-19 vaccines may be slightly less effective against variants.

“The immune response to natural infection is likely to provide some degree of protective immunity even against SARS-CoV-2 variants because the CD4+ and CD8+ T cell epitopes will likely be conserved,” the authors wrote.

COVID-19 recovered patients also displayed stable antibody responses to the other human coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) or the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

“These data are most consistent with the generation of long-lived plasma cells and refute the current notion that these antibody responses to human coronaviruses are short-lived,” the researchers said. “Moreover, the COVID-19 patients mounted increased IgG antibody responses to SARS-CoV-1, a related pathogen that none likely had experienced previous exposure to.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is monitoring multiple variants, but only four are of concern since they “seem to spread more easily and quickly than other variants.”

The delta variant currently accounts for over 80 percent of all new sequenced cases in the U.S. Scientists say more research is still needed to confirm if infection with this variant is associated with more severe disease, hospitalization and death. The other three variants of concern, named according to where they were first identified are the UK variant, the South African variant and the Brazilian variant. @naomirwolf
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