'Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine: Will It Provide Lasting Immunity?'

[appalachiablue]

'Oxford coronavirus vaccine: Will it provide lasting immunity?' A COVID-19 vaccine in development at Oxford University has shown an effective immune response for 56 days. But will it last longer? Trials are ongoing. DW, July 22, 2020.

Oxford University's progress towards a vaccine for the novel coronavirus has raised hopes that there could be a product on the market by the end of the year. The UK government has already pre-ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.

The team at Oxford published the results from early-stage, human clinical trials in the British medical journal The Lancet. They say their vaccine triggered an immune response, producing effective antibodies to fight the virus. Those antibodies were detected for 56 days, after which the trials so far ended.

With such a short trial period, it's unclear whether or not the antibodies produced by the candidate vaccine last longer than 56 days, or indeed whether the vaccine will provide any form of long-term protection.

Carsten Watzl, a professor of immunology and scientific director at a Leibniz Research Center in Germany, says "there's no data about that yet. They measured the antibodies for 56 days. But the question remains: How long do these antibodies last?"

Recent studies in China and Germany have indicated that the number of antibodies generated from a natural infection with the novel coronavirus drop within two to three months after patients recover.

A vaccine would have to provide much longer protection than that, not least because it would be logistically difficult and expensive to vaccinate whole populations several times per year.

- The science behind Oxford's vaccine:

The Oxford vaccine uses so-called "Adenovirus-vector technology."

Adenovirus causes a common cold in chimpanzees — but, don't worry, we wouldn't be infected with a chimp disease if we got the vaccine. The adenovirus is simply used a vector, a carrier or a vehicle, by which the vaccine is delivered into human cells.

The adenovirus has been genetically modified for the vaccine to prevent it from growing in human cells.

It's also been modified to carry a bit of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, COVID-19. And that bit of SARS-CoV-2 has in turn been modified to remove all its infectious elements. Its job is to let the body think it's under attack and, as a result, have the body trigger an immune response...

More, https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-vaccine-oxford/a-54268557

[pansypoo53219]

1. time will tell.

[lark]

2. There are so many freaking unknowns with this micro-killer.

How long after a fever subsides is the person still infected or able to infect others? That's the problem we're facing. Our SIL was positive (but it took 12 days to get the results back). 7 days after he had no symptoms, and because his first test was negative, we had dinner with them. Then 5 days later, he gets the positive test result back. So, out of an abundance of caution, hubby and I got tested last Sat. Was told we'd have results in 48 hours - they lie. It's been 5 days, 4 working days since then and no results yet. Don't think we have it, no fevers, no coughing aside from my usual occasional allergy coughs/sneezes, no body aches, no unusual tiredness, no loss of taste or smell. But then Amanda and H never lost their taste or smell either. Think, maybe because they are in early 30's and healthy, they got the mild version of this? Anyway, here in virus epicenter, it's still taking way too long to get results and it's spreading wildly because of repug assholishness.