Moreover, some tests — including those made by Abbott and Roche and offered by Quest Labs and LabCorp — are designed to detect a subtype of antibodies that doesn’t confer immunity and may wane even faster than the kind that can destroy the virus.
What that means is that declining antibodies, as shown by commercial tests, don’t necessarily mean declining immunity, several experts said. Long-term surveys of antibodies, intended to assess how widely the coronavirus has spread, may also underestimate the true prevalence…
A mild illness may trigger production of only a few antibodies, and a severe one many more. The vast majority of people who become infected with the coronavirus have few to no symptoms, and those people may produce a milder immune response than those who become severely ill, Dr. Havers said.
But even a minor infection is often enough to teach the body to recognize the intruder.
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