New Study Finds That COVID-19 Antibody Immunity Might Wane Over Time

There are certain diseases that you can get a vaccine for and more or less be guaranteed protection against it for the rest of your life, or at least for a very substantial period of time. However, there are also illnesses like the flu whose virus mutates every so often that even getting a vaccine will only protect you for about a year before it’s useless against the latest mutation of it.

If you were hoping for a permanent vaccine for the COVID-19 virus, you might be disappointed to learn that might not be the case. According to a study conducted by scientists at Imperial College London, they found that antibody prevalence in the population fell from 6% at the end of June to about 4.4% in September. This suggests that over time, our antibody immunity against the virus can wane.

What this means that even if a vaccine were to be developed, there is a chance that it could end up being similar to a flu vaccine where you might need to get inoculated every once in a while to ensure that you do not fall sick. To a certain extent, scientists have kind of anticipated that this could happen.

This is due to the fact that COVID-19 is a type of coronavirus, and based on past coronaviruses, it is typically found that immunity does not last long against them. However, this isn’t to say that a vaccine would be useless as it could help people, especially those deemed high risk, from catching it which could lead to serious health complications. It could also drastically reduce the spread and allow life to return to some semblance of normalcy.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Medical
Tags: Coronavirus, covid-19, Health, Science