4 ms·
Where's the study and data? What's the time frame we're looking at here? This German study (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v1 https
by Nav_Panel 6y ago
Where's the study and data? What's the time frame we're looking at here?
This German study (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v... -- see the graphs near the end of the PDF) suggests that viral RNA may be detectable in recovered patients for 3 weeks after symptom onset, or longer (the study seemed to stop testing after 3 weeks, despite some recovered patients still testing positive for viral RNA). But they were unable to isolate live virus after about a week post-onset.
Could this be what we're seeing?
If you're still worried, I recommend looking at this small study on macaques designed to test immunity (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1). They found that the macaques did develop immunity and were able to fight off the virus on reinfection. If we compare with the this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/) on the development of immunity in response to the original SARS virus (I'm not sure on the exact mechanism of immunity, but if the body's immunoglobulin response targets the spike protein, then it's probably similar), we should probably expect antibody production to continue at least a year after infection, if not for 3-4 years after.