Super-immunity to COVID-19 — Research Shows Certain Individuals are Seemingly Impervious to the Virus

What would you do if you found out you had a super-immunity to SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19?

Recent research out of Rockefeller University in the United States has found that some people have managed to produce an incredible antibody response – and it’s not only COV-2. While the study has yet to be peer-reviewed, the findings are definitely caused for excitement. In this article, we’re going to break down some of their findings and how they came to the conclusion that super-immunity is achievable –for some people. Let’s dive in.

 

 

Breakthrough Variants

Do you remember the late Winter of 2020? With several promising vaccines in condensed trials – one of the greatest feats of collaborative science to date, the world was locked in to the race of the century.

If you were anywhere in the western world, you probably remember hearing headlines that ran something along the lines of “THE RACE BETWEEN VACCINES AND VARIANTS”.

The race was on to get vaccines into arms before the virus had a chance to mutate past the means of our vaccine. So who won the race? Well, frankly, it hasn’t ended yet. With vaccines rolling out just as the notorious Delta variant was making its way around the globe, the West may be in the lead by the skin of their teeth.

As the virus makes easily makes its way through the unvaccinated population, breakthrough infections of vaccinated people have been reported at a rate that is high enough to cause concern.

In order to learn more about COVID-19 immunity and vaccine efficacy, the study set out to learn from people with higher antibody levels, and what it learned is certainly interesting and hopefully s useful.

They found that certain people who had extremely effective antibody and immune responses had another thing in common. They had been infected with COVID before receiving the vaccine. This kind of hybrid-immunity, it turns out, is extremely effective against SARS COV 2 and all of its six (at the time of writing) variants.

 

But that’s not all it’s good for.

Researchers went one step further – remember the first time we heard of the SARS virus back in the early 2000s? That virus was called SARS COV 1, and though related, was a much different kind of disease. People with a super-immunity to COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2) also showed an extremely strong antibody response to the older virus, as well as other viruses commonly found in bats and pangolins – where SARS COV 2 is thought to have originated.

Well, scientists couldn’t leave it at that – they engineered a virus with not 6, 7, or 8, but 20 mutations! It didn’t matter. The super-immunity was able to respond to all of them. Again, the study is yet to be peer-reviewed, however if these findings are legitimate, it could lead to new weapons in humanity’s greatest fight of our generation.

 

Sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-56324050

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.455491v1

https://interestingengineering.com/despite-breakthrough-infections-covid-vaccines-still-work

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677208/new-studies-find-evidence-of-superhuman-immunity-to-covid-19-in-some-individuals

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abj2258

Did you miss this?

Other Popular Stories

  • GM investing $250 million at Ingersoll plant
  • Advanced manufacturing initiatives to drive innovation, growth
  • Bill Gates betting we can invent our way to a clean energy world
  • National Energy Board not doing enough to ensure pipeline safety: report
  • Five defence industry technologies — right out of science fiction — that are real today
  • Robocop becomes real-world: robot law enforcement in Dubai may bring Robocop to a neighborhood near you
  • Shipyard receives $65.4 million under national shipbuilding strategy
  • $25.8 million Low Carbon Innovation Fund aims to help commercialize technologies that reduce greenhouse emissions.
  • Exports, innovation key to small business success: CIBC
  • Large Ontario wind power project gets go-ahead, now hiring
  • Large CSeries order builds momentum for Bombardier
  • California mandates energy storage to bring more renewables into grid
  • CAE announces flight simulator contracts worth $130 million
  • Netherlands company to test plastic road construction
  • World's largest public transit system to be built in only 5 years — in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia
  • Irving Shipbuilding looking to lure workers back east from Alberta
  • Tesla Model S earns near-perfect score from Consumer Reports
  • Armoured vehicles an important niche in Ontario's auto industry
  • Scientists create liquid fuel from solar energy
  • Wind capacity reaches 82,183 megawatts in US, enough to power 24 million homes
Scroll to Top