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The Telegraph
A quarter of people may already be immune to the coronavirus, although many have never been infected
A quarter of people may already be immune to the coronavirus, although many of them have never been infected, a new study from Public Health England (PHE) suggests. In recent months, researchers have followed nearly 2,850 key police, fire and healthcare workers to assess levels of immunity to the virus. They found that, in June, one in four had high levels of T cells that recognized Covid, suggesting they had some level of protection against the virus, but almost half had never been infected. Researchers believe that they likely contracted immunity from similar coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold. In the four months of follow-up, no one with a high T-cell count became infected with Covid, suggesting that they were protected against it. Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, CEO of Oxford Immunotec, the company that developed the T-cell test for the trial, said it showed that antibody testing alone can underestimate the number of people who are already immune to the virus. . “We’re talking about people on the front lines here, so 25 percent may be a bit high, but this suggests that we’re not seeing a real picture through antibody surveillance surveys and that many more people have cell immunity. T, “he said. . “It also suggests that the models that predict the outcome of the pandemic improperly think that more people are going to get it than they really are.” In these data, there is a significant cohort of people who have T cells without antibodies. Clearly, some of this may be because those antibodies have waned over time, but some of it is probably immunity to other infections. There has been growing speculation that there is a cross-reactive immunity phenomenon in which people who have been exposed to the common cold virus will also be protected from Covid. “
