Since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, we have now reached nearly 4.3 million confirmed cases around the world, with around 288,000 thousand deaths. But if there's any consolation, the number of recovered cases around the world has already surpassed 1.5 million, and some countries have already flattened the curve.
Nevertheless, the easing and lifting of lockdowns still bring fear to many, especially with the reappearance of COVID-19 cases in China, South Korea, and Germany after slowly easing quarantines.
But the reopening of various countries, including the US, is imminent.
With this, people are back to asking the million-dollar question: do people who recover from the coronavirus infection or COVID-19 gain immunity?
COVID-19 and Immunity
According to LiveScience, this is an essential question to answer as it could help determine who could go back to work and rejoin the general public after countries reopen as well as how long will the worst impacts of the pandemic last.
So, do people who recover from the virus gain immunity?
Scientists believe that so far, the body could gain a certain level of immunity after fighting the SARS-CoV-2 virus, much like past coronaviruses like SARS and MERS.
They believe that the body will retain a memory of the virus and will develop immunity from it for at least a few years, which would help avoid re-infection for the short-term.
"We do not have any reason to assume that the immune response would be significantly different from what's seen with other coronaviruses," said assistant professor of medicine Nicolas Vabret from the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine.
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What Happens When the Coronavirus Enters the Body
In a study published in the journal Cell, as the virus hijacks the healthy cells of the body, these cells send out a warning to other cells to fortify themselves against the attack and calls for reinforcement to beat the foreign object.
It does this by sending out a protein known as interferons.
Unfortunately, the virus blocks the interferon signal, which means other cells of the body, especially in the lungs, are still left vulnerable to the virus and its attacks.
However, as the call for reinforcement still worked, the body's immune system will begin attacking the virus as well as the healthy cells, which weren't able to enter a defensive mode and therefore obtain damage, which would then lead to inflammations and COVID-19 complications like pneumonia.
But scientists learned something more.
Since the first job of the cells works fine, survivors of the coronavirus infection will likely retain immunity to the virus.
Finding Antibodies
This finding is further backed up with the discovery of high levels of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 from people who have survived the infection.
The study was published in the journal Immunity, led by Chen Dong from the Institute for Immunology and the School of Medicine at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Researchers collected samples from 14 COVID-19 survivors, and it showed that 13 of them had high levels of antibodies despite only experiencing mild symptoms.
Antibodies stick around in the blood, and if they encounter the virus, they will bind to it, which would either neutralize it and render it useless or would mark it for the other immune cells to destroy.
Until When is This Immunity Going to Last?
Unfortunately, the virus has only been around for five to six months, which makes it hard for experts to know how long this immunity will last.
"Per our findings, we can only confirm that COVID-19 patients can maintain the adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 for two weeks post-discharge," said Dong.
However, looking at past coronaviruses, Vabret has reason to believe that the immunity lasts longer than that.
As of now, it is still unclear what type of immunity people who recover from COVID-19 get and whether it is enough to help them avoid getting re-infected with the disease, as well as how long it can last.
