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How Long Does Immunity Last After COVID-19? What We Know

Written by Cathy Cassata on October 22, 2021 — Fact checked by Jennifer Chesak

New research shows that the antibodies that develop from COVID-19 remain in the body for at least 8 months.

For those who recover from COVID-19, immunity to the virus can last about 3 months to 5 years, research shows.

Immunity can occur naturally after developing COVID-19 or from getting the COVID-19 vaccination.

Because the length of immunity after developing COVID-19 or getting the vaccine is unknown, practicing physical or social distancing and wearing a mask need to continue to stop the transmission.

Whether you’ve recovered from COVID-19, received the vaccine, or neither, understanding immunity and how long it lasts can help give you important insight into how you can interact safely with others during the pandemic.

First, it helps to know what immunity means.

There are two types of immunity: natural and vaccine-induced.

How natural immunity works after COVID-19 develops
After a person acquires a virus, the immune system retains a memory of it.

The National Institutes of HealthTrusted Source explains, “Immune cells and proteins that circulate in the body can recognize and kill the pathogen if it’s encountered again, protecting against disease and reducing illness severity.”

The components of immunity protection include:

Antibodies are proteins that circulate in the blood and recognize foreign substances like viruses and neutralize them.
Helper T cells help to recognize pathogens.
Killer T cells kill pathogens.
B cells make new antibodies when the body needs them.

People who recover from COVID-19 have been found to have all four of these components. However, specifics about what this means for the immune response and how long immunity lasts are not clear.

Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said it’s not known exactly how long the protection after natural infection will last and how durable that protection will be against a variety of different variants.

“There are some people who have the notion that after you’ve gotten natural infection, you will be permanently protected against COVID-19 as if this were measles. Unfortunately, the two viruses are very, very different. The coronavirus protection wanes naturally after a period of time,” Schaffner told Healthline.

Because COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus, which the type of virus the common cold is also caused by, he said researchers have an understanding of how other coronaviruses behave, which may help understand immunity for COVID-19.

“We all know we can get repeated common colds, and the studies on those viruses indicate that their protection begins to wane after about a year, and of course we can get reinfected down the road,” he said.

An October 2021 study by the Yale School of Public Health that was published in The Lancet Microbe reported that unvaccinated people should have immunity against reinfection for 3 to 61 months after they get COVID-19, if their community is still experiencing infections from the virus.

The researchers determined their conclusions based on analysis of previously published data on viruses that are similar to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

They concluded that re-acquiring the virus that causes COVID-19 is similar to that of getting the viral infection that causes the common cold from year to year. They note, however, that at this time, during the pandemic, COVID-19 has proven to be much more deadly.

“We know [acquiring] the coronaviruses do not provide long term protection. We don’t expect that the protection from natural infection from COVID is going to be long-term. But we still need more data on this,” said Schaffner.

An older study published in the journal Science found that immunity can last for as long as 8 months.

According to Shane Crotty, PhD, a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California who co-led the study, his team measured all four components of immune memory in almost 200 people who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and recovered.

The researchers found that the four factors persisted for at least 8 months following infection with the virus.

This is important because this shows that the body can “remember” SARS-CoV-2. If it encounters the virus again, the memory B cells can quickly gear up and produce antibodies to fight it.

Before this study, Lauren Rodda, PhD, a senior postdoctoral fellow in immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said work had been done by her research team and others, showing that antibodies are maintained for at least 3 months.

In her team’s studyTrusted Source, in particular, it was shown that this occurs even in people who have mild symptoms.

Their study also suggested that immunity could last much longer.

In a different study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers in Iceland studied 1,107 people who had recovered from COVID-19 and tested positive for the antibodies.

Over a 4-month period, they found that those COVID-19 antibodies did not decline.

A studyTrusted Source published in the journal Immunity found that people who recovered from even mild cases of COVID-19 produced antibodies for at least 5 to 7 months and could last much longer.

Their team has tested nearly 30,000 people in Arizona since April 30, 2020, shortly after a blood test for the new coronavirus was developed.

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