DIVISION OF LABOUR

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF ANTIBODIES AND T-CELLS?

When an individual is infected with Covid, an immune response kicks in to control SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In simple terms, antibodies mostly stop viruses outside of cells; T-cells stop viruses inside of cells.

Prof. Alessandro

Sette and

Prof Shane

Crotty explained in Cell

(January 12, 2021) that this is the “division of labour” in the human body’s innate immunological mechanisms which has proven to be a successful complementary approach to control most viral infections.

WHAT ARE TITRES?

To better understand how the immune response mechanism works against Covid, clinicians count antibody “titres”.

An antibody titre is a type of blood test that determines the presence and level (titre) of antibodies in the blood.

HYBRID IMMUNITY VS HERD IMMUNITY

Hybrid immunity: At least one study shows that when previously-infected individuals are vaccinated with just one dose, specifically when using an mRNA vaccine, they get a more vigorous response compared to natural immunity (from infection), or a double-dose vaccine (artificial infection).

Herd immunity: It can be reached when enough people in the population have recovered from a disease and have developed protective antibodies against a specific pathogen.