Watsupptoday Desk


Three people who previously recovered from Covid-19 were protected during a major outbreak of the disease onboard a fishing vessel that left from Seattle, US, according to a new study that offers the first confirmation that having antibodies are enough to prevent a second infection.

The findings were based on antibody (serological) as well as viral detection (reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR) tests that were conducted before the vessel departed and upon its return. During its 18 days at sea, 104 of the 122 crew members contracted the virus from a single source.

�This suggests that neutralising antibodies are a correlate of protection for Sars-CoV-2, with obvious caveat that more study is needed since the N (number of people with antibodies) was small,� Alexander Greninger, the assistant director of the University of Washington (UW) Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratory and one of the authors of the study, said.


The findings are significant since they are the closest confirmation yet that the world�s main strategy of using vaccines to trigger immune response could indeed work to stop the pandemic. This addresses a complicated question of whether antibodies are enough to prevent disease, and ensure symptoms are mild, or have no effect at all.

Deriving such data is normally challenging since scientific ethics prohibit an intentional infection of a person with antibodies to check whether they are safe from the virus.