It can be useful to know about old COVID-19 infections, but there’s a limited time frame to investigate.
Many Australians don’t know if they’ve had COVID-19. They also don’t know how to find out and, indeed, whether there is any point in doing so.
Past infections with COVID-19 can be detected with a blood test, but the test is far more likely to detect a recent infection than one from the first or second year of the pandemic. But the antibodies measured fade over time and this is where the literature becomes cloudy, says associate professor Philip Cunningham, a biomedical scientist at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital and adjunct associate professor atAssociate professor Philip Cunningham says there aren’t many well-designed antibody studies on the timing of COVID-19 infections.
“Now Sydney is in a good position to retrieve the samples and look at how long nucleocapsid antibodies really last and what factors influence this. A factor such as severity of disease has been implicated in higher levels of antibodies.”As most people rely on direct detection with rapid antigen and polymerase chain reaction tests, he says these antibody tests have not had much utility, but are now becoming more widely used.
“Vaccine-based immunity without infection is still very strongly protective against severe disease, but provides relatively modest protection against infection.”He says the more recent the infection, the stronger the hybrid immunity and the stronger the protection against further infection.they would probably still have hybrid immunity if they’d been vaccinated too.
Even if people know their past infection status, he believes they will still make their choices about modifying their social distancing behaviour and vaccine uptake based on contemporary circumstances.
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