A new study found that COVID-19 immunity might last for years, even decades, providing a hopeful answer to one of the questions surrounding the widespread COVID-19 immunization.

Most people who have recovered from the disease still have enough cells to fight off the virus and prevent illnesses eight months after infection.

According to The New York Times report, a slow rate of decline in the short term showed that these cells might persist in the body for a very long time to come.

 The study, conducted by scientists at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California, has already been published online. However, it has not been peer-reviewed yet. 

It was also not yet published in any scientific journal. But this is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study to date regarding immune memory to COVID-19.

Shane Crotty, who co-led the new study, said the amount of memory would likely top stop a number of people from getting hospitalized for many years. Crotty is a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. 

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The study's findings provided relief to experts worrying that the immunity that would be provided by the vaccine would be short-lived.

Experts are also worried that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the COVID-19 infections at bay.

The research also saw another finding that severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS survivors still carry certain needed immune cells 17 years after recovering.

Like COVID-19, SARS is also caused by another coronavirus. The study's findings were related to evidence emerging from other studies, as well.

Researchers at the University of Washington earlier discovered that memory cells were made after the coronavirus infection stays in the body for at least three months. Marion Pepper, an immunologist, led the said study.

Another study published the previous week also discovered that people who have recovered from COVID-19 have powerful and protective killer immune cells. This even when antibodies are not detectable.

Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, said in a NY Times report that the studies "are all by and large painting the same picture, which is that once you get past those first few critical weeks, the rest of the response looks pretty conventional." 

An immunologist at Yale University, Akiko Iwasaki, said she was not surprised that the body has a long-lasting response. Iwasaki noted that this was what suppose to happen, but she added that this is still exciting news. 

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The report added that a small number of infected patients in the study did not have long-lasting immunity after recovery. It could be due to the differences in the amount of coronavirus a person has been exposed to.

An immunologist at the University of Toronto, Jennifer Gommerman, said that vaccines could overcome the individual variability. She noted that this would help in focusing the response.

Gommerman added that this is so people do not get the same kind of heterogeneity that you would see in an infected number of people.

Many fear that waning antibody levels might lose immunity to the virus. However, immunologists noted that this is natural for antibody levels to drop, adding that it is just one arm of the immune system.