Since Covid-19 is a new disease, it is unclear if our body’s immune response can protect us from future infections, and if so, for how long.

In a MedRxiv study involving 175 Covid-19 recovered patients (median age 50 y) with mild symptoms, the production of neutralizing antibodies (Nab) varied, with ~30% of patients considered to have “very low level” titers. So at least a subset of patients with mild symptoms may not produce adequate antibodies against Covid-19 despite seemingly uncomplicated recovery.  Whether these patients are at risk of re-infection with Covid-19 virus remains to be seen.¹

In a study involving patients with Covid-19 (median age 62 y) of variable severity, the rate of seropositivity at 2-4 weeks was 88% or higher. However, despite development of antibodies against surface spike protein and internal nucleoproteins of SARS-CoV-2, the Covid-19 virus, viral RNA could be detected in the throat samples from a third of patients for 20 days or longer.²

In another study involving mild Covid-19 cases, despite seroconversion after 7 days in 50% of patients and after 14 days in 100% of patients, no rapid decline in pharyngeal viral load was noted. These findings raised doubts about the role of antibodies in clearing the virus.³

Somewhat more encouraging is the finding that experimentally infected monkeys rechallenged with Covid-19 virus after full recovery 28 days following initial infection seem to be protected against Covid-19.⁴ So there may be some protection for couple of weeks at least! 

Ultimately, whether immunity to Covid-19 will be like seasonal coronaviruses that cause common colds with unpredictable protection after 1 year, or more similar to that of SARS virus with persistence of antibodies for ~2-3 years, only time will tell. ^4,5

Stay tuned!

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References

1. Neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in a COVID-19 recovered patient cohort and their implications. MedRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047365
2. To KKW, Tsang OWTY, Leung WS, et al. Temporal profiles of viral load in posterior oropharyngeal saliva samples and serum antibody responses during infection by SARS-CoV-2: an observational cohort study. Lancet 2020; March 23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099 (20)30196-1
3. Wolfel R, Corman VM, Gugggemos W, et al. Virological assessment of hospitalized patients with COVID-2019. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s42586-020-2196-x (2020) .
4. Bao L, Deng W, Gao H, et al. Reinfection could not occur in SARS-CoV-2 infected rhesus macaques. bioRxiv doi: https://dli.org/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226.
5. Callow KA, Parry HF, Sergeant M. et al. The time course of the immune response to experimental coronavirus infection of man. Epidemiol Infect 1990;105:435-46. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2170159
6. McKenna S. What immunity to COVID-19 really means? Scientific American, April 10, 2020. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-immunity-to-covid-19-really-means/

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