The Mystery of Why Some People Don’t Get Covid

We all know of a person who has dodged the coronaviruses. Is there a secret to these people's immunity that is hidden in their genes? Is it possible that it holds the key to defeating the virus?

In the early days of the Pandemic, a small, tight-knit community of scientists from around the world set up an international consortium, called the COVID Human Genetic Effort, whose goal was to search for a genetic explanation as to why some people were becoming seriously ill with Covid The partners of people who got really sick and ended up in intensive care were the most interesting cases. Andrs Spaan is a clinical microbiologist at Rockefeller University in New York. They had to find a lot of them. The team put out a paper in Nature Immunology in which they outlined their endeavor and mentioned that subjects from all over the world are welcome.

Spaan said the response was overwhelming. Thousands of emails were received by us. They had to set up a multilingual online screening survey because of the huge amount of people who signed up. Over 15000 applications have been received from all over the world.

Historical examples support the idea that these people may have immunity. Natural immunity to HIV, norovirus, and a parasites that causes recurring Malaria can be achieved by using genetic variations. The team wondered why Covid was any different. Immunology has a long history of inborn resistance against infections. A few scientists are interested. Donald Vinh is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University in Canada. He says that geneticists don't see it as proper genetics or Immunology. There is a therapeutic goal. Vinh says that you can figure out how to prevent people from getting infections if you can figure out why someone can't.

It's difficult to find immune people. Only a small group of people fit the narrow criteria of having encountered the virus yet not having any immunity against it, which would indicate an infections. Health care workers who are constantly exposed to Covid-positive patients or those who live with people confirmed to be Covid-positive are the most promising candidates. Vinh says, "On the one hand, a lot of people were getting vaccinations, which is good, don't get me wrong." Those are not the people we would like. Seeking out unvaccinated people does invite a fringe population. About 800 to 1000 recruits fit that bill.

The Omicron variant was the first to arrive. Vinh said that Omicron has ruined the project. Their pool of candidates was greatly reduced. The existence of innate resistance is supported by the fact that some recruits survived the Omicron waves.