Half of England may have Covid antibodies, says UK stats body
A little more than half of England’s population possibly has antibodies to the coronavirus disease, a BBC report said on Wednesday, citing the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). The revelation is reportedly based on a sample of England’s population in the week ending March 28.
An individual can have Covid-19 antibodies either through coronavirus infection or through vaccination.
The BBC report cites the ONS as saying that 54.9% of England’s total population would have tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies in the week ending March 28. The figure was 49.1% in Wales, 54.5% in Northern Ireland and 46% in Scotland, the report says.
“There is a clear pattern between vaccination and testing positive for antibodies, however the detection of antibodies alone is not a precise measure of protection granted by vaccines,” the report quoted the ONS as saying.
“It is possible that antibody levels in some people are now too low to be detected by our tests but still high enough to grant a level of protection.”
In Brazil, the country’s Senate on Tuesday launched a probe into President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic. The congressional inquiry is a major political headache for Bolsonaro, who has been facing record disapproval of late.
In Bangladesh, thousands of police patrolled the empty streets of capital Dhaka on Wednesday as the government enforced a strict nationwide lockdown.