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Immunity can last up to six months after a COVID-19 infection, a new study has shown.
As part of a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Foundation Trust, the study suggests that people who have had COVID-19 are highly unlikely to contract the disease for at least six months.
Knowledge of immunity following a COVID-19 infection has been limited. This study, which is part of a major ongoing staff testing program supported by the NHIR Oxford Biomedical Research Center and Public Health England, looked at a 30-week period with 12,180 healthcare workers at OUH.
Dr Katie Jeffery, Director of Infection Prevention and Control for Oxford University Hospitals, said, “This is an exciting finding, indicating that infection with the virus provides at least short-term protection. since reinfection – this news comes the same month as other encouraging news about COVID vaccines. I would like to thank all of our staff who have shown a great commitment in attending our clinics for repeated swab and antibody testing in order to maintain our patients and others safe “.
Understanding immunity
Hospital workers were tested for antibodies to the COVID-19 virus to see who had previously contracted it, and were tested regularly for infection when they got sick with symptoms and as part of regular testing. The researchers tested whether staff who had previously been infected had the same number of new COVID-19 infections as those who had not been previously infected.
The results of the study showed that 89 out of 11,052 staff members without antibodies developed a new infection with symptoms. None of the 1,246 antibody addicts developed a symptomatic infection. Staff with antibodies were also less likely to test positive for COVID-19 without symptoms: 76 staff without antibodies tested positive compared to just three with antibodies. The three health care workers with antibodies tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 were all fine and did not develop symptoms of COVID-19 again.
These findings suggest that most people are unlikely to contract COVID-19 again if they had already had it in the previous six months, and that healthcare workers who did not have antibodies to COVID-19 were more likely to develop the infection.
One of the authors of the paper, Professor David Eyre of the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, said: “This ongoing study involving a large cohort of healthcare professionals has shown that being infected with COVID-19 offers protection against regrowth. infection for most people for at least six months: we found no new symptomatic infections in any of the participants who tested positive for antibodies, while 89 of those who tested negative contracted the virus. good news, because we can be sure that, at least in the short term, most people who get COVID-19 will no longer receive it.
“We know from a previous study that antibody levels decrease over time, but this latest study shows that there is some immunity in those who have been infected. We will continue to monitor this group of staff closely to see how long the protection lasts and whether the previous infection affects the severity of the infection if people get infected again. “
While this is an important step in understanding how COVID-19 immunity can work, there is currently not enough data to make a judgment on long-term protection (beyond six months from initial infection). The study will continue to collect data, with the aim of verifying how long the protection from reinfection could last.
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