Study verified development of immunity in the population against COVID-19

The research carried out jointly by UTalca, U. Católica del Norte and U. del Desarrollo, analyzed the immune indices developed by more than 800 people from the urban center of La Serena-Coquimbo and Talca.

Camila Bauer, Journalist UTalca.- The vaccination campaign against SARS-CoV-2 carried out in Chile would have been successful, as revealed by the results of the third stage of a serial seroprevalence study, which showed that those people who have the complete vaccine scheme plus the booster have with 98% protection after 203 days of inoculation.

This new round of research, conducted by the Universities of Talca, Católica del Norte, and Universidad del Desarrollo, analyzed the immune indices developed by more than 800 people from the urban center of La Serena-Coquimbo and Talca.

As explained by the academic from the School of Public Health of our University and alternate director of the project, Loreto Núñez Franz, the results show that “we should continue with these vaccines because they effectively manage to protect the population.”

In this sense, he stated that the data supports the measures to use a vaccine for both strains. “What we have seen is that indeed what the government did to have this bivalent vaccine for Omicron is what has to be done.”

According to the researcher, the importance of these population studies is that they allow us to know the prevalence of the population having immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and also “they also allow us to collect personal data and the clinical history of vaccine use , of symptoms, which we do not have available when you take the ministerial statistics ”, he highlighted.

This information is highly relevant since, although the health crisis is over, there are possibilities for new strains to be developed, he explained.

“Since it is a new virus in humans, then the probability that there are new mutations and that a variant of concern may emerge is high,” adding that “it is important to continue doing this genetic monitoring of the strain that is circulating to see how vaccines are adapted and what measures can be taken”.

“To the extent that you maintain genomic surveillance of what is circulating, it will be favorable to be able to face and develop vaccines for this possible new variant, as is done for influenza,” he added.

For this reason, Núñez declared that the participating researchers hope to be able to continue with a fourth stage of the study, which will allow them to continue monitoring immunity in the population and thus be able to better face a new outbreak of Coronavirus.