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Headlines are optimistic: Moderna and Biontech / Pfizer’s corona vaccine candidates are said to offer 90 percent or more protection against the disease. Now there is hope that the vaccines will help stop the spread of the pathogen for the foreseeable future and contain the pandemic. But how long are we protected after vaccination?
A recent study from the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California examined infected people. According to this, both antibodies and so-called T cells, two of the central weapons of our immune system, are still detectable at least five months after the onset of corona symptoms.
Crown disease would be less bad
For Thomas Jacobs of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, these observations are encouraging in view of the way our immune systems react. The data from the American study shows that, even though antibodies are no longer detected, so-called important memory cells remain in the body.
Memory immune cells that continue to prevent re-infection. The findings suggest that the symptoms of Covid 19 disease will decrease, says Jacobs. This so-called clinical immunity would ensure that sick people only show symptoms of a cold, for example.
Lifelong protection through unadministered vaccination
However, a lifelong protective effect from vaccines cannot currently be assumed. The so-called sterile immunity is not immediately achieved either. This is achieved when the organism is able to completely kill all relevant pathogens due to the immunization that has taken place. With a view to risk groups, for example for caregivers in nursing homes, this vaccination protection should be targeted.
Anyone who built this sterile immunity would probably have to get vaccinated more often. But Thomas Jacobs says, “For the general population, clinical immunity would be sufficient.” This can be achieved with the vaccines that will soon be available.
Unclear information on spread and post-vaccination
Currently, it is not yet known whether a vaccine will also protect against transmission of the pathogen. “If the antibody response is high, the likelihood of it occurring is very low,” explains Jacobs. However, with clinical immunity, there could still be a risk of spread; more studies should be done.
Carsten Watzl, an immunologist at the Leibniz Institute for Labor Research at the Technical University of Dortmund, makes it clear that the vaccines will initially defuse the situation.
“Then we would no longer have a pandemic”
The immunologist says: “Even if the protection lasts only two years, it could be vaccinated again.” And also: “That would be annoying, but manageable.” And Sars-CoV-2 would become another pathogen to be vaccinated against periodically. Then follow the hopeful words of the immunologist: “Then we would no longer have a pandemic.” (SDA / euc)
