Some good news on covid-19
The virus seems to generate a robust and fairly long-lasting immune response

Science & technology
Sep 9th 2020 edition
Sep 9th 2020
The best hope for ending the covid-19 pandemic is a vaccine. There is no shortage of candidates. The World Health Organisation is tracking 34 in various stages of development. How well they will work, though, is another matter. On September 9th AstraZeneca, a drug firm, announced it was pausing its trials after a participant fell ill. Such pauses are common in vaccine development, a discipline in which effort does not always bring reward. Despite much research, only an imperfect vaccine is available for dengue fever (it has limited efficacy and can cause nasty side-effects). In 1987 the first trial of an hiv vaccine began in Maryland. Three decades later, the cupboard remains bare.

The news about covid-19 in two new papers is more encouraging. The first, written by a team of scientists at decode genetics, an Icelandic company, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports antibody levels in 1,200 Icelanders who had been infected with the sars-cov-2 virus and recovered. More than 90% tested positive for antibodies twice—once immediately post-infection and again four months later. People who had suffered more serious disease, such as those who had been hospitalised, developed higher levels of antibodies. So did men and older people, both of whom are at greater risk of more severe illness.

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