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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released the latest report from the COVID-19 infection survey, looking at antibody and vaccination data for the UK.
Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, The Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia, said:
“Today’s ONS sheds important light on the level of immunity within the UK population, at least those 16 years and over. The good news is that the vast majority of adults have antibody (Ab) from either immunisation or natural infection. Indeed in the most vulnerable age groups, the over 50s, more than 98% have antibodies and so some degree of protection.
“There is evidence that antibody levels are falling in the older age groups which is consistent with yesterday’s preprint1 showing waning immunity with time after immunisation. But this does not mean that people who have been Ab positive but then become negative lose all protection. The evidence is that protection against severe disease, though never 100%, will last rather longer than antibody or protection against infection.
“Today’s report has revised downwards historic estimates of antibody positivity in younger age groups since its last report. But on 29th July 64% of 17 years old were estimated to be Ab positive and this was before vaccination started being rolled out in this age group. Given that Ab is lost with time after infection this 64% is almost certainly an underestimate of the proportion of 17 year olds who have already had the infection. 16 year old have an estimated 54% positive rate.”
Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology, University of Reading, said:
“In the UK currently around 1 in 75 people has the virus1, so the latest datasets on antibodies and what they mean for immunity, should be taken with a large pinch of salt. The assumption that antibodies would mean that someone is protected from infection or reinfection was one of the biggest mistakes made at the start of the pandemic.
“Quite simply, we still don’t yet know what it takes to provide complete protection against Covid-19.
“Across the UK, there is consistently a slightly higher level of people over 16 with antibodies against the coronavirus, likely reflecting the high number of people who have had Covid.
“It could be incredibly dangerous to try to formulate public health policy on a false assumption as we have seen before2, and it would be wrong to read from these data that more than 90% of the over-16 population are now ‘protected’ from infection.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
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