Almost all COVID-19 cases develop antibodies: WHO

Geneva: Almost 100 per cent of COVID-19 patients develop antibodies no matter the course of the disease, WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove said on Friday (December 4).

"What we understand is 90 to 100 per cent of people who are infected with the virus do develop an antibody response, whether you have mild infection or asymptomatic infection all the way to severe infection. And we're still learning how long that antibody response lasts, how strong it is, how it relates to immunity from another infection, and how long that lasts," Van Kerkhove, an expert on epidemiology, said at a virtual press briefing.

Amid the continuing spread of COVID-19, one of the prominent tasks for epidemiologists is to figure out the duration of immunity to the infection and the probability of reinfection.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday said that decisions made by the governments and individuals in the coming days would be decisive.

On Wednesday, the United Kingdom authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use, becoming the first country to do so. It gave the country a jump in mass vaccination against COVID-19. "The pandemic still has a long way to run. And decisions made by leaders and citizens in the coming days will determine both the course of the virus in the short term and when this pandemic will ultimately end," Tedros said.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are 65,627,738 COVID-19 cases and 1,514,387 deaths. The United States continues to be the worst affected country with over 14 million cases as several countries and government organizations around the world are at various stages of production of the COVID-19 vaccine.

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