RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED PREEXISTING IMMUNITY IN THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN EXPOSED.

By  KALI COLEMAN JULY 30, 2020

For the last six months, people all over the world have initiated new measures into their life to try to protect themselves from becoming the next victim of COVID-19. Hand sanitizer has flown off the shelves of stores and masks are seen on most faces when out in public. As scientists and doctors study every facet of the virus, some positive news has emerged. According to a new study, you may actually already be safe from a serious case of COVID. Why? Because some people—even those who have not yet been exposed to the virus—are showing signs of preexisting COVID immunity.

The German study, published in the Nature journal on July 29, looked at a sample of 68 healthy people who had not yet been exposed to the coronavirus. Among those, 35 percent had T cells—a form of immune cells—in their blood, which can directly attack the novel coronavirus.

These T cells were only thought to be found in people who have already had COVID-19, and the study did find those cells in 83 percent of participants who had the virus. But how did those who had not been infected get these immune cells? The study authors believe healthy individuals may have generated these T cells when fighting similar infections from related coronaviruses in the past. And the cells can use “cross-reactivity” to respond to the new coronavirus.

“It does appear in this study that there is a significant proportion of individuals that have this cross-reactive T cell immunity from other coronavirus infections that may have some impact on how they fare with the novel coronavirus,” Amesh Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told CNN. “I think the big question is trying to jump from the fact that they have these T cells to understanding what the role of those T cells might be.”

Original article can be viewed here

  corona hoax, coronavirus, covid-19, herd immunity, immunity