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Hyderabad: Almost all countries affected by SARS-CoV-2 are exploring numerous strategies to get out of the blockade. In the past few weeks, a particular approach that has caught the imagination of many and has sparked widespread discussion is the concept of issuing “immunity passports” or “risk-free certificates” to people.
People with such certificates, which will be issued by health authorities and, in some cases, even individual diagnostic laboratories, will be able to move freely, even without wearing masks, and will be able to join their offices and resume normal tasks while those without said certificates. will continue to be quarantined or blocked.
It all started when some countries suggested that the detection of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 among individuals could serve as the basis for issuing ‘immunity passports’ or ‘risk-free certificates’ that would allow them to travel or return to work assuming they are protected. against reinfection.
Can “immunity passports” based on individual response to SARS-CoV2 be the ideal exit strategy? Is there sufficient evidence of reinfection among COVID-19 patients who have recovered? Does an “immunity passport” guarantee that a person who has developed antibodies will not receive COVID-19 again?
According to the analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO), most studies show that people who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 have antibodies against the virus. However, some of them have very low levels of virus neutralizing antibodies in their blood. So far there has been no study that has evaluated whether the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this virus in humans, the WHO said.
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at WHO, through various media and social media platforms, had argued that not enough is known about the immune response to COVID-19 to use these (immunity passports) widely. and can provide a false sense of security. At this stage of our understanding of immunity to COVID-19, the idea of immunity passports is not only irrational but could be dangerous. We need a better understanding, he said on the social media platform Twitter.
The only way to detect if infected people have developed antibodies is through rapid diagnostic tests. Essentially, such tests predict whether the individual has developed antibodies in their blood against the virus. However, there have been question marks about the reliability and accuracy of rapid diagnostic kits.
These kits can falsely label infected people as negative (false negative), and sometimes such tests also label uninfected people as positive (false positive). Such errors have serious consequences and tend to directly impact containment efforts.
Rapid diagnostic kits generally identify the presence of antibodies, but can they specifically identify what type of coronavirus the individual has developed the antibodies?
In addition to SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus causes the common cold, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and severe acute respiratory syndrome. People infected with any of these viruses can produce antibodies that cross-react with antibodies produced in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. In such situations, it is difficult to rely on rapid diagnostic kits to determine the immune response or the presence of antibodies against the virus.
Public health experts, including the WHO, have said there is not enough evidence on the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an “immunity passport” or a “risk-free certificate.”
Additionally, people who assume they are immune to the second infection because they have received a positive test result may develop a false sense of security and ignore all public health warnings that have the potential to increase the risk of continued transmission.
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