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Only one in 10 Americans showed signs of a previous corona infection with the virus in late July, suggesting that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the world’s largest hotspot do not have immune protection against the virus.
One of the largest studies of its kind, published Friday in the Lancet magazine, reached that percentage based on the percentage of dialysis patients whose immune systems produced antibodies to the coronavirus.
Exactly how many Americans are immune to corona is not stated, because not all infected people have produced antibodies. It is also unclear how strong the antibody protection can be and how long it lasts. But when the results are compared with similar studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other institutions, it is obvious that most Americans are not protected from the disease that has already killed 200,000 of their compatriots. .
– We’re still in the middle of a fight. We are all tired and we are all waiting for a vaccine. This shows us that nothing is over, even after this second blow – said New York University epidemiologist Eli Rosenberg, as reported by the “Washington Post”.
Researchers from Stanford University and the Ascend Clinical Laboratory, which processes laboratory tests for kidney dialysis patients, examined remnants of blood plasma samples from a randomly selected group of 28,500 patients. Each of them was on dialysis in July at one of 1,300 centers in 46 federal states. Plasma tests revealed that only about eight percent have antibodies to coronavirus, a molecule that the immune system creates to fight infection.
That means that about nine percent of American adults have antibodies, according to Stanford biostatistics and study co-author Maria Montez-Rat, who classified patient data by region, age and gender to “translate” that result into general population. The CDC study of medical specimen debris from the general population, not just dialysis patients, found a similar percentage of patients with antibodies in the summer months.
The findings suggest that for every patient who tests positive, there are nine more who are unknowingly infected. While this may not seem bad at first glance, it unfortunately means that herd immunity is far from the emergence of a vaccine, even at the world’s largest hotspot. Epidemiological models suggest that between 60 and 70 percent of the population would have to acquire protection against corona, either from a past infection or a vaccine, to stop its spread.
On the other hand, antibodies are not a perfect way to acquire the so-called “herd immunity.” This is because scientists do not yet understand immunity to the corona virus well enough. There is no definitive data to show that antibodies confer immunity, just as there are no other forms of immunity that are also important.
The study findings coincide with CDC Director Robert Redfield’s claim this week that roughly 90 percent of the US population is likely vulnerable to the virus. This statement was later refuted by Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump’s pandemic adviser.
– Not many people are susceptible to infection. More people have protection against memory T cells, Atlas said Wednesday.
Some scientists theorize that various people have T-cell-based immunity due to previous contact with other coronaviruses, however that theory has yet to be proven.
VIDEO: How the crown enters human cells
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