Jahangeer Ganaie
Srinagar, Nov 13: As the Covid-19 positive cases have shown a slight increase in the past few days, experts on Saturday said that there is no concrete information about how long immunity lasts after getting fully vaccinated or a person recovers from the Covid-19 months.
As per the experts, immunity can occur naturally after developing COVID-19 or from getting the vaccination
“The components of immunity protection include antibodies that 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 and B cells make new antibodies when the body needs them,” they said.
Experts believe that people who recover from COVID-19 or get fully vaccinated have been found to have all four components. However, specifics about what this means for the immune response and how long immunity lasts are not clear.
“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 re-infected down the road, and as COVID-19 is caused by a Coronavirus,” experts said. They said that as vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective, therefore the need for a booster shot may become standard like it is annually for the flu, especially to protect against new variants.
Dr Nisar ul Hassan a flu expert and President Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) said that they are not certain about how long the immunity will last once a person is fully vaccinated.
He said that for people who have got fully vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19 before several months, there is possibility that immunity may have waned off.
“There is a need to go for booster shots to fully vaccinate people, mainly to elderly and people have underlying problems,” Hassan said.
“After this pandemic will be over, it may settle down as a seasonal one and come every winter. We may need to vaccinate people every year for Covid as well,” he said.
Dr Salim Khan HOD Community Medicine at GMC Srinagar said that there is need to go for booster dose as immunity may last for just few months after getting fully vaccinated or recovering from Covid-19 as booster dose will make immune response system strong and immunity will remain more time which usually starts waning off after few months.
“Vaccinated people in J&K are still protected as general public has started getting second dose just before three to four months but they must continue to follow Covid appropriate behavior and can get infection and can have symptoms,” Khan said.
There are two broad classes of such responses—antibody responses and cell-mediated immune responses, in which we can just see only antibody response and cell-mediated immune responses can’t be checked.
“So, nothing can be said whether the person is vulnerable a year after fully vaccinated like as he was before vaccination,” Khan said.
