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Taking a closer look at the negative people, who didn’t get COVID, Lalvani’s team found that seven of them had a lot of these cross-reactive T cells. Within about three days, half of that group, or 26, turned positive. These 52 started out negative themselves. It allowed Lalvani and his colleagues to find 52 people who lived with individuals who tested positive for COVID. England has a really good contact tracing system. But since researchers saw this in test tubes, they had no idea what this meant for immunity in real life.Ījit Lalvani, an infectious disease physician at Imperial College London, decided to find out. Early in the pandemic, scientists noticed that T cells that reacted to the cold virus also reacted to the pandemic virus. The cold coronavirus and the pandemic coronavirus are distantly related. These microbes have been with us forever, and they cause sneezing and runny noses: the common cold. It turns out some people might be getting help from another part of the immune system: T cells, which were triggered years ago by exposure to different but related coronaviruses. You don’t get antibodies until after you’ve been exposed or vaccinated. The virus is so wildly infectious, though, that the 20 percent of serious cases have been a global catastrophe: five and a half million people dead, 850,000 of them in the U.S.īut in people who don’t get very ill-what’s protecting them? We hear a lot about neutralizing antibodies, but this is a new virus to us. Overall about 80 percent of infected people get a mild illness. And this was true before any of us were protected by vaccines. Some people get really sick, while others have mild symptoms or none at all. What’s the holdup? We’ll explain.įrom early in the pandemic, it’s been clear that not everyone is equally vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID. Today new research shows how old cold viruses may help protect you against the coronavirus causing the pandemic, and vaccine makers are not rushing out shots against the Omicron variant, even though the original shots have lost some effectiveness. Tanya Lewis, usually here with me, has the day off. I’m Josh Fischman, Scientific American’s senior health editor. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. This is your fast-track update on the COVID pandemic. Josh Fischman: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series.
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