Analyses of immune dysfunction in severe COVID-19 patients have revealed dysregulated immune responses including abnormal myeloid cell subsets (Schulte-Schrepping et al., 2020; Silvin et al., 2020), HLA class II downregulation on monocytes (Wilk et al., 2020), lymphopenia (Cao, 2020), and elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines (Del Valle et al., 2020). However, presentation of COVID-19 is heterogeneous and as such, understanding the immune response across varying disease severities is important to predict disease prognosis and provide effective treatment given the stage of disease. A …
The Implication of Immunological Memory in SARS-CoV-2 Resistance
In the past month or so, we have seen time and time again studies and news stations reporting that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 begins to wane within a few weeks of infection and is largely absent by 3 months post-infection. As scary as this sounds, it does not necessarily mean that there is no hope for establishing herd immunity or ever doing away with COVID-19. No immunity is everlasting – even the longest-lived memory B cells will die after 40 years or so – and even viruses for which we have highly successful vaccines require multiple rounds of vaccination to build up a successful immune response …
Zoonotic transmissible SARS-CoV-2 mutant identified in Danish mink
On Wednesday November 4th, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that a zoonotically transmissible mutant strain of SARS-CoV-2 had been discovered on mink farms in northern Denmark[1]. The Danish State Serum Institute had reported their findings to the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Control a week earlier, although the data have not yet been published publicly. The novel strain reportedly shows reduced sensitivity to antibodies in laboratory tests and seems to have originated in the mink population. Thus far, 5 animals and 12 humans have tested …