Persistent Cellular Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Infection

SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for an ongoing pandemic that affected millions of individuals around the globe. To gain further understanding of the immune response in recovered individuals we measured T cell responses in paired samples obtained an average of 1.3 and 6.1 months after infection from 41 individuals. The data indicate that recovered individuals show persistent polyfunctional SARS-CoV-2 antigen specific memory that could contribute to rapid recall responses. In addition, recovered individuals show enduring immune alterations in relative numbers of CD4 ⁺ and CD8 ⁺ T cells, expression of activation/exhaustion markers, and cell division.

We show that SARS-CoV-2 infection elicits broadly reactive and highly functional memory T cell responses that persist 6 months after infection. In addition, recovered individuals show enduring immune alterations in CD4 ⁺ and CD8 ⁺ T cells compartments.