The little town of Vo ' in northern Italy became one ofEurope ’s first COVID-19 hotspotsin February 2020 . Over class one , scientist are now expose that the town is home to a surprisingly high issue of so - called " super - resistant " people who have unusually high numeral of antibody against the virus .
Vo ' , a little rural townsfolk an hour ’s driving from Venice with a population of around 3,200 masses , go through Italy ’s first COVID-19 demise on February 21 , 2020 . Shortly after , lockdown was promptly bring down , while the military machine and squad of scientists come on the town in a bid to advantageously sympathise this emerging disease outbreak .
Prolific testing – crucially , including those that were n’t showing any symptom – was rolled out across the huge majority of the small universe , rapidly revealing authoritative perceptivity into how to confront the outbreak . Back in June 2020 , scientist from the University of Padova and Imperial College Londonpublished a paperon the people of Vo ' that unwrap that far-flung examination , keep apart infected people , and lockdowns are central in controlling the outbreak . This is now unwashed knowledge , but it ’s an theme that was first affirmed thanks to Vo ' .
Now , this small town is still acting as an intriguing COVID-19 case study . The Timesrecently sent a reporter to the townsfolk who wrote that many of the township ’s people still have a surprising amount of antibodies nine months on , longer than some expert predicted . Out of the 129 the great unwashed who still have stalwart levels of antibody nine months on from the initial outbreak , at least 16 had over double the horizontal surface they had in May . Furthermore , a comely number of people are what ’s love as “ A-one - resistant cases , ” a non - scientific terminal figure used to describe people with passing gamey levels of antibody against COVID-19 .
“ We imagine it is because they had a contact with a overconfident after May , ” Enrico Lavezzo , a microbiologist from the University of Padua , toldthe Times . “ The computer virus entered their consistency , infect a few electric cell but was quickly eliminated by the antibody they already had . But something else happened : the virus excite the production of even more antibodies . None had any symptoms . ”
“ Many viruses stir the further product of antibody when there is a contact , ” Lavezzo added . “ What we saw here with Covid is that a liaison can more than double the antibodies you already have and that really stretch the prison term you are protect . ”
It ’s unclear how representative these early brainstorm might be to the largerquestion of COVID-19 antibodies . After all , there is still some dubiety over how long antibody and meaningful resistance can last . However , perhaps more will be revealed in brief , since the dubiousness of antibody in Vo ' is the bailiwick of an approaching study by the University of Padova and Imperial that ’s currently undergoing peer - review , according toNBC News .
