We do not yet know if all COVID-19 patients are able to mount effective immunity and prevent reinfection.
On Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading public health expert and adviser to President Trump, announced on CNN that “within a week or so, we are going to have a relatively large number of tests” to determine if recovered COVID-19 patients, including those who never showed symptoms, have evidence of immunity. Among policymakers, there is discussion about whether results of this testing could be used to issue “certificates of immunity” that would allow individuals to return to normal life.
The important underlying concept is that not all antibodies can prevent infections. When we have an infection, our immune system will create many different antibodies. Some antibodies, called non-neutralizing antibodies, will attach to parts of the infectious agent, in this case SARS-CoV-2, that are not involved in how it invades our cells to cause disease.
Another open question with COVID-19 immunity is how long it will last. Other coronavirus strains that cause seasonal infections like the common cold, show declining immunity a few weeks after infection, and reinfection within a year. But SARS-CoV, the cause of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome pandemic, has more genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 — and more reassuring immunity data. SARS patients had two to three years of protection from reinfection.
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