Coronavirus: Disease Control

(asked on 18th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment have they made of the latest studies about seroprevalence on antibodies and the implications of these results for future immunity from COVID-19.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 30th June 2020

Control of COVID-19 requires the ability to detect asymptomatic and mild infections, that would not present to healthcare and would otherwise remain undetected through existing surveillance systems. This is important to determine the number of infections within the general population to understand transmission and to allow estimations of infection fatality and infection hospitalisation ratios.

Public Health England (PHE) is undertaking several studies on sero-prevalence in England, using samples from a range of sources, including the PHE seroepidemiology unit, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the ‘What’s the STORY’ study and NHS Blood and Transplant. PHE seroprevalence results are published weekly in the PHE surveillance report. A copy of the latest Weekly Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Surveillance Report: Summary of COVID-19 surveillance systems (published 19 June 2020) is attached.

There is good evidence that most people infected develop an antibody response. Work is continuing in PHE to understand whether the immune response to infection prevents reinfection, and if so how long any protection may last.

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