80 Percent of COVID Patients Still Have Antibodies After One Year in Major Swedish Study

Of those who became ill with COVID-19 a year ago, 80 percent still have antibodies to the virus, a major Swedish community study has concluded.

The study follows 2,000 hospital employees at Danderyd Hospital, who submit blood tests every four months and answer questions via a special app.

“We could see early on that many of those who fell ill had a loss of smell and taste, and that 10 percent of those who had become infected had no symptoms whatsoever”, Sebastian Havervall, a doctoral student at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute told national broadcaster SVT.

The antibodies were said to provide good protection for both what was previously called the British variant and today is referred to as Alpha and the Delta variant that is now spreading rapidly across the globe, edging out other strains and becoming the dominant one in many countries.

Yet, protection against the South African and Brazilian varieties that today are referred to as Beta and Gamma is not as strong.

“The protection levels against the Beta and Gamma strains are 30 to 40 percent lower”, Sebastian Havervall said.

The research group at Danderyd Hospital also investigated how many vaccine doses are needed for those who have already been infected. Previously, it was concluded that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine is sufficient. The Danderyd group maintained that it also applies to a single shot of AstraZeneca.

“The infection acts as a first shot and then the second acts as a booster. In fact, it turned out that they received as good or even slightly better protection than non-infected people who received two Pfizer shots”, Sebastian Havervall concluded.

To date, Sweden has seen 1.11 million cases with over 14,600 deaths, more than the rest of Scandinavia combined.