In a yet to be a peer-reviewed article, Schulien et al. (2020) has extensively studied the SARS-CoV-2 epitope-specific role of CD8+ T cells in COVID-19 (Schulien et al., 2020). The study found the presence of newly generated and pre-existing SARS-CoV-2 specific cells with the positive response seen in 88.4% of patients who had mild disease symptoms (n = 26). The most substantial response was found against N protein and ORF3a. Further, CD8+ T cells response was shown persistent even in the individuals who became seronegative. In a patient studied longitudinally (70 days), CD8+ T cell response prolonged but antibody did not persist. All these three studies taken together point toward the presence of functional and long-lasting reactive T cells in convalescent individuals, while others also suggest the presence of reactive T cells in critically ill patients (Weiskopf et al., 2020). Thus, based on these studies, it appears that COVID-19 patients who exhibit mild disease symptoms and successfully recover, display functional and long-lasting T cell response. However, these findings may not be definitive to provide a coherent functional view of these cells during recovery, as none of these studies compared the T cell response to disease severity. A further difference in the time of sample collection may also complicate the findings. In the study by Grifoni et al. (2020) samples were collected throughout 20–35 days after symptom onset, whereas Weiskopf et al. (2020), used samples collected after 14 days of ICU admission. Thus, more studies under controlled clinical settings and large cohort size are warranted.