Immunity to Corona – for how long?

For more than a year, the Corona pandemic has dominated our lives. Those who have recovered or been vaccinated are immune to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, at least for the time being, but how long does this protection last? In their “News & Views” article “A long-term perspective on immunity to COVID” in the journal NATURE, Andreas Radbruch and Hyun-Dong Chang summarize new research showing that individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 develop stable immunity after about half a year. Protective antibodies and the plasma cells that produce them remain unchanged for the duration of the study (one year). It is expected that this protection will last for many years, and that vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 will also induce stable immunity, i.e. protective “immunological memory.”