URMC COVID-19 immunity study looking for participants - WHEC

Now that patient and others can do something to help.  

Dr. Branche and her colleague Dr. David Topham who runs URMC’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology are heading up the study which is supported by a $5 million grant from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The team is hoping to recruit 100 people in the Rochester area who are COVID-19 positive and follow them for several months.  

“We're interested in understanding how your body's immune or defense system responds to an infection over time and specifically how you develop protection against COVID-19 after you've been infected,” Branche said.  

We’ve all heard about antibody testing.

“The antibody testing is important because it tells us what the true infection rate has been,” Dr. Topham said.

But it doesn’t tell us whether already having the virus will help a person long-term.

“You can get re-infected with coronaviruses, regular seasonal ones, so it's possible that you might be protected for a short time after this COVID infection but we don't know how long that lasts, that's part of the objective of this study to find out how long those protective antibodies last,” he said.

The research team is also interested in learning more about how long a person sheds the virus, how long he or she is infectious and how COVID-19 transmits, particularly among families in the same household.  

And then, of course, there’s the bigger picture,

“There's a phenomenon with virus infections called herd immunity and once enough of a population is infected and immune the chances that the viruses will spread is diminished simply because there are fewer targets for the virus to latch onto, so again we need to know that information,”  Dr. Topham said.  

The research, he says, has significant implications for the public health response to COVID-19, vaccine development, and decisions related to the re-opening of the economy. 

To learn more about the study and/or sign-up to take part visit: www.covidresearch.urmc.edu or call (585) 273-3990 or email: vaccine_research_unit@urmc.rochester.edu.

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URMC COVID-19 immunity study looking for participants - WHEC
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