According to a study published today in the Journal of Science, the Covid-19 virus and antibodies can coexist in young patients.
The study has been done by the researchers at the Washington-based Children’s National Hospital .
The latest study is expected to improve the current understanding of how long it takes children to recover from the Covid-19 virus. It was also aimed at to find out when the infected children start to produce antibodies against the Covid.
“With most viruses, when you start to detect antibodies, you won’t detect the virus anymore. But with COVID-19, we’re seeing both,” says Burak Bahar, M.D., lead author of the study and director of Laboratory Informatics at Children’s National.
This means children still have the potential to transmit the virus even if antibodies are detected.
The researchers are now planning to conduct further study to find out if the virus that is present alongside the antibodies can be transmitted to other people. They will also test if antibodies correlate with immunity, and how long antibodies and potential protection from reinfection last.
This study used a retrospective analysis of 6,369 children tested for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and 215 patients who underwent antibody testing at Children’s National between March 13, 2020, and June 21, 2020.
Out of the 215 patients, 33 had co-testing for both the virus and antibodies during their disease course. Nine of the 33 showed presence of antibodies in their blood while also later testing positive for the virus.
When it comes to the timing of viral clearance, the researchers found that the median time from viral positivity to negativity, when the virus can no longer be detected, was 25 days.
The median time to seropositivity, or the presence of antibodies in the blood, was 18 days, while the median time to reach adequate levels of neutralizing antibodies was 36 days. Neutralizing antibodies are important in potentially protecting a person from re-infection of the same virus.