Large antibody study offers hope for virus vaccine efforts

Antibodies that people make to fight new coronavirus last for at least four months after diagsis and do t fe quickly, as some earlier reports suggested, scientists have found.

Tuesday's report, from tests on more than 30,000 people in Iceland, is most extensive work yet on immune system's response to virus and is good news for efforts to develop vaccines.

If a vaccine can spur production of long-lasting antibodies like natural infection does, it gives hope that “immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may t be fleeting,” independent experts from Harvard University and US National Institutes of Health wrote in a commentary published with study in New England Journal of Medicine.

One of big mysteries of pandemic is wher having h coronavirus helps protect against future infection and for how long. Some smaller studies previously suggested that antibodies disappear quickly and that some people with few or symptoms may t make many at all.

new study was done by Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics, a subsidiary of US biotech company Amgen, with several hospitals, universities and health officials in Iceland.