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A report, released today, of testing more than 30,000 people in Iceland is the most extensive work ever done on the immune system’s response to the new coronavirus and is good news for efforts to develop a vaccine.
If a vaccine can stimulate the production of long-lasting antibodies, as natural infections do, it will give hope that “immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus is not short-lived,” wrote independent experts from Harvard University and the Institutes. Health Department, in a comment published with the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
One of the great mysteries of the pandemic is whether having the coronavirus helps protect against future infections and for how long.
Some studies, smaller in size, suggest that antibodies disappear quickly and that some people, with few or no symptoms, may not produce many.
The new study was carried out by the Reykjavík-based company DECODE Genetics, a subsidiary of the American biotechnology company Amgen, with a strong presence in hospitals, universities and healthcare workers in Iceland.
