Researchers Find Hope For Covid-19 Vaccine After Monkeys Recover & Develop Immunity Towards Virus

The whole world is in a race to see which one of them will produce a vaccine for Covid-19 first. Active researches have been going on and we can read the news to see every day a county would claim that they’re “one step closer to finding the vaccines”. Why are these countries in a race? Well, whichever country manages to find the vaccine first will have an economical and political advantage over all the other countries.

In that race, despite recording the most number of cases globally, the United States is persistent in developing a vaccine for Covid-19. The latest development in their study is that monkeys which were infected with the virus developed an immunity when they were re-infected with the virus after recovering. This is a step in the right direction for Covid-19 vaccine development.

Reuters reported scientists have first assumed that antibodies produced in response to the new Covid-19 virus are protective but there wasn’t enough evidence to support these claims. Dr Dan Barouch, a researcher at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston said this is extremely good news!

“The findings suggest that they do develop natural immunity that protects against re-exposure.”

In another study, Barouch and his colleagues tested 25 monkeys with six prototype vaccines to see if antibodies produced in response were protective. They then proceeded to expose these monkeys and ten control animals were also exposed to the virus. The control animals showed high degrees of the virus in their noses and lungs (similar to humans), the vaccinated animals showed a “substantial” degree of protection. Eight of the vaccinated monkeys were completely protected.

Although these studies don’t prove that humans and develop an immunity to the virus after recovering, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. While we wait for these vaccines to develop, you know what to do, just stay home and stay safe!

Also read: University of Oxford To Begin Human Testing Of Potential Covid-19 Vaccine Tomorrow