February 25, 2021

latest results from the REACT-2 study on coronavirus antibody prevalence in England

The REACT-2 study from Imperial College London aims to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies across England.  The new batch of data includes self-testing finger prick antibody results from 154,000 people taken between 26 January and 8 February 2021.

Because the vaccine roll-out was ongoing during the sample period, some of those sampled (17,000) had had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine – the study looks at what happened to antibody levels after one and two vaccine doses, and in different age-groups.

Journalists dialled in to this briefing to hear from the scientists about their study.  Please note this data is a preprint, so it is early work that has not yet been through peer-review and is not published in a journal.

Speakers included:

Prof Paul Elliott, Director of the REACT programme, and Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Imperial College London

Prof Helen Ward, Professor of Public Health, Imperial College London

Prof Graham Cooke, Professor of Infectious Diseases, Imperial College London

This Briefing was accompanied by an SMC Roundup of Comments.