Two new studies give evidence that having COVID-19 might offer some protection against future infections.
Researchers found that people who made antibodies to the novel coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.
The results bode well for vaccines, which provoke the immune system to make antibodies — substances that attach to a virus and help it be eliminated.
Photo: AFP
Researchers found that people with antibodies from natural infections were “at much lower risk ... on the order of the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine,” of getting the virus again, US National Cancer Institute director Ned Sharpless said.
“It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected, Sharpless said.
The institute’s study had nothing to do with cancer — many federal researchers have shifted to COVID-19 work because of the pandemic.
Both studies used two types of tests. One is a blood test for antibodies, which can linger for many months after infection. The other type of test uses nasal or other samples to detect the virus itself or bits of it, suggesting current or recent infection.
One study, published on Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, involved more than 12,500 health workers at Oxford University hospitals in the UK.
Among the 1,265 who had COVID-19 antibodies at the outset, only two had positive results on tests to detect active infection in the following six months, and neither developed symptoms.
That contrasts with the 11,364 workers who initially did not have antibodies; 223 of them tested positive for infection in the roughly six months that followed.
The institute study involved more than 3 million people who had antibody tests in the US.
Only 0.3 percent of those who initially had antibodies later tested positive, compared with 3 percent of those who lacked such antibodies.
“It’s very gratifying” to see that the Oxford researchers saw the same risk reduction — 10 times less likely to have a second infection if antibodies were present, Sharpless said.
The findings are “not a surprise ... but it’s really reassuring, because it tells people that immunity to the virus is common,” said Joshua Wolf, an infectious disease specialist at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis who had no role in either study.
Separately, another new variant of COVID-19 appears to have emerged in Nigeria, Africa’s top public health official said yesterday.
“It’s a separate lineage from the UK and South Africa,” Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director John Nkengasong told reporters.
The Nigeria Centers for Disease Control would analyze more samples, Nkengasong said.
“Give us some time... It’s still very early,” he said.
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