Some people are obviously more resistant than others when it comes to COVID. Some people pass away after weeks of battling the disease; others face strong symptoms that make them feel horrible, while others who contract the disease barely have any symptoms at all.
According to The Hill, researchers from Mount Sinai and Duke-NUS Medical School have come up with the dqTACT test for checking a person’s immunity to COVID. The test checks for the T-cells in the body, which have the role of fighting viruses. The purpose of the test is to identify what risk a person has to deal with a breakthrough infection, but also to tell the frequency of which a person who’s immunocompromised must get vaccinated.
If larger clinical trials in the upcoming months will confirm that the test is reliable, approval from the FDA will be demanded.
T-cells are the white blood cells responsible for stopping the virus from becoming aggressive in the cells
Ernesto Guccione, who’s professor of pharmacological sciences and oncological sciences at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, and also one of the lead authors of the new study, explained as The Hill quotes:
Even if [someone] gets infected, as long as there is a robust secondary immunity, these people will clear the virus within a few days or a week and then go on to live their lives.
For the dqTACT test to work, there has to be a mixture of a blood sample with peptides from the coronavirus. The eventual T-cell response that can take place after 24 hours also plays an important role in the equation.
The COVID pandemic is still not officially over. According to worldometers.info, over 260,000 infections worldwide with the coronavirus were reported yesterday.
The new study was published in Nature Biotechnology.