'Vaccine efficacy likely to last for a year or more' 'Vaccine efficacy could last for a year or more'

Laith Abu-Raddad.

An infectious disease expert at Qatar Foundation (QF) says that Covid-19 vaccine immunity could last for a year or more, provided there are no new variants that may escape this immunity. ‘In Qatar, we have been following natural immunity developed by a cohort over 40,000 people that previously contracted Covid-19 for more than seven months now. We have not seen any waning of immunity in the cohort so far. This is encouraging and potentially means that the vaccines will be able to give us strong immunity against the virus. I would say, a year if not more, provided we do not have new variants that may escape this immunity,” said Dr Laith Abu-Raddad, professor, Infectious Disease Epidemiology at QF partner university, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. “While we don’t have sufficient data on how long immunity from the vaccines will last, we can draw an analogy with natural immunity because we think it is similar to vaccine immunity. It is also possible that vaccine-derived immunity may be better and last longer than immunity derived from virus infection. As variants increase, we will need to have booster doses. Vaccine developers are already working on potential boosters for emerging variants of concern,” explained Dr Abu-Raddad. The expert recommended that even if the virus keeps evolving, people should go for vaccination.