We may not know if the coronavirus can be trapped twice for ‘a couple of years’

We may not know if the coronavirus can be trapped twice for “a couple of years,” a chief medical officer warned.

And Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he wouldn’t feel comfortable going to a crowded room, despite having Covid-19.

Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said it remains unclear whether the antibodies administered by the disease will protect a patient from contracting it again.

He said the “overwhelming majority” of people who had recovered from Covid-19 were found to have antibodies in their bloodstream.

But he said, “The next question is, do those antibodies protect you from future infections?

“And we just haven’t had this disease … long enough to know the answers to that for sure.”

He added that the antibodies produced in response to other human coronaviruses “do not necessarily persist for years and years and years,” although it was not known what would happen in the case of Covid-19.

We will simply have to follow the people who have recovered and test them repeatedly until we understand how the antibodies last and how long they protect.

He said multiple studies were underway in the UK, which will follow people who have recovered from the disease for “at least a couple of years.”

It’s just one of those where we can’t get science to move faster than how fast our bodies go in terms of antibody maintenance.

Like everyone else in the world, we just have to be patient and cautious until we get those answers.

Hancock said the government was in talks with Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche about antibody tests.

He revealed that having recovered from coronavirus, now participates in a test to analyze the antibodies of the patients.