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After a Covid-19 illness, most patients develop a long-lasting immune response, as a US study shows.
Collection of blood for an antibody test in an emergency in the city of Bern: after suffering Covid 19, most of those affected have antibodies.
Photo: Franziska Rothenbühler
After surviving the Covid-19 disease, patients are apparently protected from reinfection for up to five months. This applies even if the disease was only mild to moderate, as American virologists now report. Therefore, it provides new data on the question of whether and how strong the protective effect is after a previous infection with Sars-CoV-2.
As the scientists of the specialized magazine «Sciences» report, more than 30,000 Covid-19 patients were screened for the study. Antibodies against the Sars-CoV-2 virus were initially detected in the blood of these patients. These proteins form the immune system to fight pathogens and be able to catch them immediately in the event of a new infection. However, not all antibodies are capable of this interception.
Therefore, the researchers tested a small number of test subjects to see if their blood contained neutralizing antibodies, those immune molecules that can actually turn off the virus. Of a specific amount of antibodies, which experts call «Title» virus neutralization could be demonstrated in all samples.
Knowledge is also of interest for vaccine development
Since most of the patients examined had such a high titer after infection that it only started to decline at the end of the observation period, the scientists conclude that there is an immune response that in most cases protects against a new infection during five months or more.
The new knowledge is mainly related to the Vaccine development Interesting. At a Science Media Center news conference on Wednesday, immunologists had stated that protective immunity after natural infection with Sars-CoV-2 was quite weak, because the virus uses the nasopharynx as an entry point and only uses it from limited way there. The immune system comes into contact. Vaccines, on the other hand, are usually delivered into the muscles and can elicit a stronger immune response there.
From the natural immunity but apparently but If it turns out to be stronger than expected, this indicates a longer-lasting protective effect of the vaccines.
