Blood plasma from patients overcoming COVID-19 may be unnecessary

As many as 30% of patients with coronavirus will never be able to develop antibodies in the right volume to form a defense against reinfection, writes The Daily Mail. Fudan University staff have shown that almost a third of patients have so few anti-coronavirus antibodies that they are unlikely to be immune to infection. This means that there is a real risk of reinfection.

Meanwhile, the antibody search tests that many countries are now introducing look for antibodies without analyzing their level. Therefore, transfusion of the patient’s plasma may be unnecessary. The researchers analyzed the blood plasma of 175 Chinese survivors of COVID-19 for the presence of anti-coronavirus antibodies.

Elderly and middle-aged patients were shown to have significantly higher plasma antibody titers than younger patients. For example, 10 patients had such low levels of antibodies that they could not be detected by the test. About 40% had an average level of antibodies and 14% had a high level of antibodies. On average, patients developed antibodies within 10-15 days after infection.