Coronavirus has been called “deadly”, “unforgiving”, a “novel virus” but recently, a London-based immunology expert called it “a very deceitful virus”. The reason for such a statement by the expert was because the immunity to the virus is believed to be very confusing and short-lived.
The constant development in the trends and patterns of the virus are bringing up new real time data that is adding to the existing data. One such new discovery has been in relation to the immunity against Covid-19.
Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at the Imperial College London said that in any cluster (city or town) where the virus had spread, just 10%-15% of the population were probably immune, which raises serious doubts about the efficacy of or dependency on herd immunity.
According to Altmann, herd immunity is “probably never going to work”. And this isn’t only one person saying that. The director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the advisor to the White House on Covid-19 was also of the similar idea that any vaccine against Covid-19 may not provide long term immunity.
He further added that if the novel coronavirus behaved like other coronaviruses, such as those that cause common cold, “the durability of immunity that’s protective ranges from three to six months to almost always less than a year”. Long story short, we may never be completely immune from this virus despite having a vaccine.
Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) couldn’t be entirely sure of whether people who have been infected with Covid-19 and have recovered will not be reinfected. There is no guarantee of that. More studies across the US, China and Japan have shown also that reinfections had been observed in patients who had recovered from Covid-19.