Can you boost your immunity against Covid-19?

When Sophie Cunningham, the 23-year-old American basketballer returned to the court two weeks ago after recovering from coronavirus, she made a claim that has been echoed around the world. She claimed that she had been infected twice with the virus. And this pronouncement is something the medical research community is unwilling to accept. You see, after an infection with a virus, one gets long-lasting immunity, because of the antibodies present in the system. It is the premise on which vaccine development is built. So, a reinfection shouldn’t happen. But rarely, have there been cases of a reinfection. And if this is what is happening with coronavirus, it throws a huge spanner in the prospects of a successful vaccine development or the notion of herd immunity.

“No one is yet believing in reinfection since there is no good scientific report on it, On the other hand, no one wants to dismiss the possibility,” said Monica Gandhi, the associate chief of infectious diseases at the University of California-San Francisco in a briefing.