Study Indicates that COVID Antibodies still present up to a Year after Infection

A study indicates that antibodies are still present up to a year after infection with the coronavirus, according to the Associated Press.

Immunologist Ali Ellebedy at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that nearly a year after people recovered from COVID-19 they had plasma cells, one of the body’s immune defenses, that moved to the bone marrow where antibodies were continuing to be produced.

This is why even though antibodies decreased over time, they were still present.

“I would imagine we will need, at some time, a booster. What we’re figuring out right now is what that interval is going to be,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious diseases expert, told a Senate subcommittee last week. He noted that vaccines against COVID-19 will not last forever.

Ellebedy is now conducting research on whether plasma cells form in people after receiving the vaccine.