More positive vaccine news: Study finds antibody levels remain elevated 3 months after Moderna vaccination

A new study finds that people still had high levels of antibodies three months after receiving the Moderna vaccine, positive news for estimating how long immunity to the virus from the vaccine will last.

The results published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest that people will have immunity for at least three months after receiving the vaccine. It is still a serious question of how long immunity will last in total. It is possible people will have to return to get booster shots after some number of months if immunity is not long-lasting.

But the results finding elevated antibody levels three months after people received the second dose of the Moderna vaccine are encouraging, researchers said.

“These data give us further optimism to expect that the high level of efficacy recently demonstrated by [the vaccine] to prevent COVID-19 disease will be durable,” said Tal Zaks, Moderna’s chief medical officer.

Neutralizing antibody levels “declined slightly over time, as expected, but they remained elevated in all participants 3 months after the booster vaccination,” the letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine states.