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COVID-19 Immunity: How To Get It, How Long It Lasts, And How To Detect It

The Webster Dictionary’s Word Of The Year in 2020 was pandemic. But we’d be willing to bet that one of next year’s words will be immunity.

Immunity will end the pandemic — getting us back to work and travel. But what’s the best way to get it? Does surviving COVID-19, for example, provide it? We know vaccines do, but how long will that immunity last? 

Can people with vaccine immunity still transmit the virus? And what will it take to get herd immunity — that state where so many people have immunity that even non-immune people are protected?

Host Robin Young talks to Anne Rimoin, a University of California Los Angeles epidemiologist specializing in emerging diseases and vaccination.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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