At least 5% of people in the UK have now developed COVID19 antibodies, a study has found
John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has warned studies of other coronaviruses suggest"potentially bad news" for hopes humans could develop long-term immunity.
He told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday:"We can also see from other coronaviruses, from ones that cause coughs and colds, that individuals again do seem to not have particularly long-term immunity to many of those viruses, allowing them to get reinfected later.There have been more than 252,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the UK, and at least 36,124 deaths.
Londoners are so much more likely to have had the infection because the capital was two weeks ahead of the rest of the country on the epidemic curve as we went into lockdownAnd since then spread of the virus has slowed dramatically. These are results based on small samples of people across the country, so there will be a margin of error.
That’s why scientists are excited about the 10 million antibody tests that the government will roll out from next week.But the figures give us a useful guide to what has happened over the past few weeks.Roughly 60% of the population would need to have had the virus and be immune to re-infection to stop the virus spreading.
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