A large study conducted by Spanish researchers reveals that the antibodies developed by people infected with Covid-19 would disappear in just a few weeks.
- Only 5% of Spaniards have developed immunity, far from the 60% needed to declare collective immunity.
- 14% of people who tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in a first series of tests had none two months later.
- The majority of patients who no longer show antibodies had few or no symptoms.
To get out of the health crisis linked to the coronavirus, collective immunity definitely seems to be an impossible option. The French health authorities very quickly calmed things down on possible automatic immunity for infected patients. Doubts confirmed by a study carried out in China which suggested that the immune response to Covid-19 could prove to be less strong in people diagnosed positive but who did not present symptoms relating to the disease. A new, large-scale study, conducted by Spanish researchers and published in the journal The Lancet concluded that antibodies developed after contracting the virus would disappear after just a few weeks in some patients.
No symptoms, no immunity for long
The researchers concluded that the overwhelming majority of the population did not develop antibodies against the disease. Only 5% of Spaniards have developed antibodies, according to the study carried out by the Spanish government in collaboration with the country’s leading epidemiologists. A figure far from the 60% necessary to declare a population in a situation of collective immunity.
Even more worrying, 14% of people who tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in a first series of tests had none two months later. This disappearance of antibodies was mainly observed in asymptomatic patients or in those with few symptoms, confirming a Chinese study published on June 18 in the journal NatureMedicine. “Immunity may be incomplete, it may be transient, it may last for a short time and then disappear”, advance to Times Raquel Yotti, director of Spain’s Carlos III Health Institute, who co-led the study.
Test positive for antibodies does not mean eternal immunity
This observation leads to the conclusion that a positive response to an antibody screening test should not lead to the belief that one is immune forever. “The absence of symptoms suggests a mild infection, which never really allows the immune system to work well enough to generate ‘immunological memory’”, decrypts Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, in Great Britain.
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