Key Highlights
- Cellular immunity to COVID (T-cell) likely present 6 months after initial infection
- Collaborative research by UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium, Public Health England and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust found “robust” immune responses to COVID 6 months after infected
In the midst of the coronavirus surging to new heights throughout Europe and the United States, there is some good news on the COVID-19 front.
Research done in collaboration by the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium (UK-CIC), Public Health England and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has found strong cellular, or “T-cell,” immunity against COVID-19 in patients initially infected with the virus six months earlier.
Scientists involved with this collaborative preliminary research have been specifically studying T-cells that are present in our immune systems. These hard-working immune producing T-cells attack other cells previously infected with and then recovered from the coronavirus. Additionally, T-cells help different immune system antibody producing-cells strengthen and multiply to ward off any future virus/pathogen invasions.
It turns out that T-cells are helping people who had tested positive from COVID, but not hospitalized with the virus, in March and April remain immune from the virus six months after the initial infection. It also turns out that, according to Professor Paul Moss, the lead researcher from the University of Birmingham in concert with the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium, that cellular immunity to COVID is stronger in people who expressed symptomatic infection than those who were asymptomatic. More research is obviously needed to learn if symptomatic individuals are and will be better protected from COVID reinfection in the future.
This research was done, in part, by collecting monthly serum samples from previously COVID-infected people and then collecting blood samples from these people six months after the initial infection to assess the T-cell or cellular response (or “memory”) of and to the coronavirus.
Thus far, the research indicates, “T-cell responses were present in all individuals at six months after SARS-CoV-2 infection…” and “that a robust cellular memory against the virus persists for at least sic months.”
This research is a great step in not only understanding how immunity to COVID works but also in how the development of future vaccines to the coronavirus can be most effective.
Thanks to CNBC.
