Fishing boat outbreak may offer virus immunity insight — Study

LONDON: Three crew of a Seattle fishing boat who were found to have antibodies able to neutralise the new coronavirus remained uninfected in an outbreak that swept through the ship, sickening most people on board, researchers have reported.

The small real-world study, which has not been peerreviewed, is among the first in humans to suggest a link between neutralising antibodies — those that stop the virus latching onto host cells — and protection from infection.

Researchers from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle screened 120 of 122 people before they boarded the fishing vessel in May, testing both for active virus and for antibodies in the blood that would indicate a previous or ongoing infection.

None of the crew tested positive for the virus, but six had some antibodies and of those, three had evidence of neutralising antibodies.

More than two weeks after the boat set sail, it returned to shore with an infected crew member who needed hospital treatment.

Researchers then tested all the crew over several weeks and found that 85 per cent — 104 crew members — were infected.

But none of the three with neutralising antibodies tested positive, nor did they report any symptoms during the outbreak.

“Therefore, the presence of neutralising antibodies from prior infection was significantly associated with protection against re-infection,” the authors of the study said.