This is a question many people are wondering about: are people contaminated by coronavirus immune afterwards? If first, the Institut Pasteur expressed reservations about herd immunity, now a new study comes and delivers more encouraging answers.
This study has been carried out on 160 members of the nursing staff by the Institut Pasteur and the Strasbourg university hospital. The nursing staff members have all been contaminated by Covid-19, the goal of the inquiry was then to answer this question: how many sick nursing staff members will develop antibodies?
It ensures that out of the 160 nursing staff members, 159 have developed temporary immunity, that is to say antibodies able to protect them from the virus momentarily. “More interesting, we were looking for neutralizing antibodies we know protect against, for instance, reinfection. And from that, for a month, we find them in 98% of the people infected by SARS-CoV-2. Results that are indeed good news” epidemiologist Arnaud Fontanet says on France Inter.
For now, it is still rather difficult to precisely assess for how long this protection can last. According to the first analyses on the nursing staff, immunity is said to last from a few weeks to a few months. An encouraging new study, even though it only applies to people exposed to the virus, which is under 10% of the population. A proportion that is not enough to develop herd immunity. In the meantime, serologic tests for the nursing staff have been set up.
