Could COVID-19 persist in your home?

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on there are increasing questions about how long the virus may persist in residents homes. And one crucial way for hospitals to detect possible cases is through a host of tests that are carried out in peoples homes.

The most important thing is that the antibodies in a persons home is given up at some point Dr. Robert Robinson senior scientist at the Brooklyn Lab and the Center of Molecular Biology the department of molecular biology at Woodrow Wilson School of Medicine told Reuters Health.

Its a normal part of grieving a loved one being able to pick up their belongings from the apartment and go all the way home. If the patients dont have an off switch that first thing in the middle of the night the virus will be fine in a second.

Robinson and Dominic Escrow a researcher in Robinsons group at the Bush Family Center for Cancer Research at Columbia University published their work in Nature Communications. Robinson asked his colleagues Dr. Alexandre Cercolle from the University of Crete and Dr. Guillaume Duron from the University of Vals to publish their findings.

Robinson and his team measured quantities of antibodies in the blood of 43 COVID-19 patients at Woodrow Wilson Hospital using a technique called Southern blot analysis. The researchers excluded patients who didnt have antibodies because they didnt have the disease.

Although SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people have been implicated in COVID-19 most vaccines that protect humans against SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are very young or during the infant phase.

Although China has cleared the virus and has prolonged government-run infection trials of people receiving experimental vaccines from Novavax Inc the companys clinical trial for its electrogenic vaccines is also ongoing.

Robinson thinks that antibodies in peoples homes should be tested in order to more accurately validate the vaccines.

When we look at antibody signatures antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 are very close to areas theyve been in Robinson said. So its something that you would want to be able to confirm.. CRACKDOWNSimilar analysis is being done for antivirals. If antibodies in homes become viable vaccine candidates they need to be evaluated again something that could be done in hospital and clinical trials.

The advantage is that we can allow the immune system to start with a certain build-up of antibodies and scan the blood for those. That way were taking antibodies from the very beginning Robinson said.

Given how quickly the virus has mutated in most people with COVID-19 such antibodies would likely not have long to show up with COVID-19 tests. Or perhaps there will be additional antibodies that have already accumulated and are linked with immunity.

If we find antibodies that are linked to immunity then well get into treating patients and in the long term hopefully have something we can use for treating COVID-19 Robinson said.

It works well for Redfield because she can get them tested correctly from her office he said.

The overall approach becomes clear once the number of patients has reached a certain threshold.

And this is the idea that I think we should have – lets go up and up and further and more and more and more and more and develop this as a way to test antibodies Robinson said.

Robinson whose lab at Columbia contributed to the study feels the surge of antibodies is a good thing.

And you can suppose people that go through mourning suffering can give that surge of antibodies and they arent susceptible he explained. So this is a perfect thing because if you have 10000 people suffering youve got 10000 people in who are going to be resistant.