SARS-CoV-2 infection protects against rechallenge in rhesus macaques
Abishek Chandrashekar, Jinyan Liu, Amanda J. Martinot, Katherine McMahan, Noe B. Mercado, Lauren Peter, Lisa H. Tostanoski, Jingyou Yu, Zoltan Maliga, Michael Nekorchuk, Kathleen Busman‐Sahay, Margaret Terry, Linda M. Wrijil, Sarah Ducat, David R. Martinez, Caroline Atyeo, Stephanie Fischinger, John S. Burke, Matthew D. Slein, Laurent Pessaint, Alex Van Ry, Jack Greenhouse, Tammy Taylor, Kelvin Blade, Anthony Cook, Brad Finneyfrock, Renita Brown, Elyse Teow, Jason Velasco, Roland Zahn, Frank Wegmann, Peter Abbink, Esther A. Bondzie, Gabriel Dagotto, Makda S. Gebre, Xuan He, Catherine Jacob-Dolan, Nicole Kordana, Zhenfeng Li, Michelle A. Lifton, Shant H. Mahrokhian, Lori F. Maxfield, Ramya Nityanandam, Joseph P. Nkolola, Aaron G. Schmidt, Andrew D. Miller, Ralph S. Baric, Galit Alter, Peter K. Sorger, Jacob D. Estes, Hanné Andersen, Mark G. Lewis, Dan H. Barouch
Abstract
Immunity from reinfection One of the many open questions about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is whether an individual who has cleared the virus can be infected a second time and get sick. Chandrashekar et al. and Deng et al. generated rhesus macaque models of SARS-CoV-2 infection and tested whether natural SARS-CoV-2 infection could result in immunity to viral rechallenge. They found that animals indeed developed immune responses that protected against a second infection. Although there are differences between SARS-CoV-2 infection in macaques and in humans, these findings have key implications for public health and economic initiatives if validated in human studies. Science , this issue p. 812 , p. 818