Why length of immunity is key Covid battleground

Being infected with coronavirus could mean you’re immune for at least eight months. I’d agree with that – when I had my first Covid vaccination, I still had antibodies after 11 months.

- Dr Miriam Stoppard

Researchers have detected many different elements of the immune system specific to defending against coronavirus months after symptoms first appeared.

These include antibodies and white blood cells in the blood of Covid survivors, as Jennifer Dan and colleagues from the universities of California, New York and San Diego describe.

So could people who catch it develop long-lasting immunity?

“Essentially we see that in 90% of the people there is a robust immune response at the six to eight-month level,” says Alessandro Sette, an immunologist at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, in the US, and co-author of new research.