…vaccinating people if there is an available vaccine (or vaccines). Treatments that may be discovered and developed will help prevent progression of disease, help people recover from COVID-19 and will probably add to herd immunity.
Herd immunity is disease-specific and is influenced by the ease with which the disease spreads from person to person, or the level of contagiousness. The specifics about coronavirus and herd immunity are not yet characterized. Regardless of the specifics, achieving herd immunity by the repeated process of infection of one person, recovery and immunity will take a long time – many, many months or even years.
In patients who have recovered from Covid-19 or may have carried the virus without realizing it, a serological test can show who carries antibodies, even if the virus is no longer present. Antibodies are proteins that help the immune system identify and eliminate threats. Once they’re made, they help the body neutralize future infections from the same threat.
Establishing who is immune is important for figuring out who can safely return to work.
Serological tests use blood serum, the liquid part of blood, excluding cells and clotting proteins. Even though SARS-CoV-2 isn’t typically present in blood, an infection causes white blood cells to make antibody proteins that help the immune system identify viruses and stop them, or mark infected cells for destruction.