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Whether people develop immunity to COVID19 after being infected once is a pressing question. It’s of particular interest to several research developing plasma therapies, whereby antibody-containing blood plasma is extracted from recovered patients and administered to patients to help them fight off the infection.
In rhesus macaques, a longitudinal tracking of re-exposure after the disappeared symptoms of the SARS-CoV-2-infected monkeys was performed. These monkeys, after the primary infection, experienced weight loss, viral replication mainly in nose, pharynx, lung and gut, and a moderate interstitial pneumonia at 7 days post-infection. After the symptoms were alleviated and the specific antibody tested positively, infected monkeys were rechallenged with the same dose of SARS-CoV-2 strain. Notably, neither viral loads in nasopharyngeal and anal swabs along timeline nor viral replication in all primary tissue compartments at 5 days post-reinfection was found in re-exposed monkeys (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226).
This small study of macaques supports the idea of using plasma from recovered patients as a treatment for COVID-19.
The results underscore the possibility that plasma therapy approach with administration of antibodies from other people is thought to be one way to provide patients with immediate immunity. Studies suggest that this approach improved the prognosis for certain SARS patients in the 2003 outbreak in Hong Kong.
In order to evaluate the efficacy of convalescent plasma therapy in the treatment of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Good outcome was defined as discharge by day 22 following the onset of SARS symptoms. Poor outcome was defined as death or hospitalization beyond 22 days. A higher day-22 discharge rate was observed among patients who were given convalescent plasma before day 14 of illness (58.3% vs 15.6%; P<0.001)( Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis. 2005 Jan;24(1):44-6).
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