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ROME: Italy began testing for antibodies in the northern Lombardy region on Thursday, seeking information on coronavirus immunity to help guide authorities as they reopen the blocked country.
Lombardy, the region most affected by the coronavirus crisis in Europe’s most affected country, is betting that the science of “collective immunity” derived from blood tests will help the thriving industrial region to return to work more effectively. quickly and safely.
Almost 13,000 people have already died from the virus in the densely populated Lombardy, the capital of which is Milan, more than half of the total death toll in Italy.
Although Germany has already begun testing for antibodies at the national level and countries like Finland and Britain have announced plans to implement them, many questions remain about how reliable the data derived from the tests will be.
Health authorities have said that 20,000 tests would be carried out every day in Lombardy. The first to be evaluated are those in the most affected provinces: health workers, those in quarantine showing symptoms of coronavirus and those with whom they have been in contact, as well as others with mild symptoms.
Authorities hope to extend the tests to the wider region after April 29.
The head of the Italian National Health Council, Franco Locatelli, said last month that antibody tests would help authorities determine the spread of the coronavirus.
The data would also provide “very relevant information on herd immunity” that would be useful in developing strategies to help restart the country, he said, like who could go back to work.
Risks remain
The kits, manufactured by the Italian biotechnology firm DiaSorin, look for the presence of antibodies in the blood. These antibodies indicate that the person has been exposed to the virus, indicating a certain level of immunity.
They differ from the most common swab tests, which analyze the molecules of nasal secretions to determine if a person currently has the virus.
Swab tests from Lombardy have revealed that 24 percent of those tested have the virus.
Immunity to the virus is poorly understood and hopes for its effectiveness may be overstated.
In the absence of data, virologists and epidemiologists must extrapolate information from previous coronaviruses, such as the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, to make predictions.
Experts believe that at least 60 to 70 percent of a population must be immune to the virus to gradually eliminate it.
But recent studies, such as one conducted in March and April by the Institut Pasteur in France, have found that so-called “collective immunity” was more difficult to achieve than previously believed.
At a high school in the French department of Oise, the site of one of the country’s first outbreaks, researchers found that only 26 percent of students, teachers, and their families carried antibodies.
Furthermore, it is not known how long immunity to the coronavirus lasts, which means that there is a risk that those considered “immune” may become infected again and transmit the virus to others.
‘No warranty’
“There is no guarantee that these antibodies will protect against a new infection. We can only hope for now. We will know in the future,” said Guido Marinoni, president of the Bergamo Dental and Surgical Association. AFP Thursday.
Marinoni, who organized the local tests in the seriously affected province of Bergamo and plans to study the results, also warned that a lack of antibodies could mean that the disease was still in its early stages and that the antibodies had not yet been activated.
Even more risky, a person who has developed antibodies can still carry traces of the virus and be contagious. Therefore, experts like Locatelli from Italy say that antibody tests should be accompanied by swab tests.
Immunologist Jean-Francois Delfraissy, who heads the French scientific council formed to combat the coronavirus, said many questions remain.
“We are currently wondering if someone who has had COVID-19 … is as protected as we think we are,” he said.
Scientists must wait until more reliable data is available, said Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute of Global Health.
“It is too premature,” Omer told AFP. “We should be able to get clearer data very quickly, in a couple of months, when there will be reliable antibody tests with sensitivity and specificity.”
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