A new study shows COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna may give longer immunity than previously thought.
Research published in the medical journal 'Nature' has found mRNA vaccines "set off a persistent immune reaction in the body" meaning they could protect you from COVID-19 for years.
Windsor Regional Hospital Chief of Staff Dr. Wassim Saad is calling the news very promising.
He says, before these findings, immunity was thought to last six to nine months.
"Now obviously we don't know for sure if it's going to be life long immunity because we don't have that kind of timeline, but what we do know is after you receive the vaccine the immune system seems to continue to provide antibodies and protection well beyond what we initially thought was six to nine months."
Saad says this could eliminate the need for booster shots.
"Sometimes when we immunize somebody their levels might drop after eight months or a year, but at the one year mark the antibody levels were not dropping. So that's very promising. That suggests that it could last for years, potentially even a life time, which means we would not need to get booster shots if that proves to be the case."
He says the wildcard is any new variants that could pop up.
"The problem, of course, is in some developing parts of the world, in areas where you can't get people vaccinated or where you have high vaccine hesitancy you could potentially have ongoing infections and the more the virus replicates the more likely it is to create a variant. That, of course, puts the whole population at risk."
The study also found people who recovered from COVID-19 and then received a vaccine may be even better off as antibodies continue to mature and strengthen for at least a year after infection.