Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one forty
Speaker 1: two since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: Scientists have been focused on studying virus antibodies to develop
Speaker 1: a vaccine, but encouraging new research shows our bodies may
Speaker 1: be developing other weapons that could be key to slowing
Speaker 1: the outbreak. But first, here's what happened in virus news today.
Speaker 1: Vietnam confirmed its first death from the pandemic after a
Speaker 1: sudden cluster of cases emerged in the coastal city of
Speaker 1: Da Nang. For more than three months, the country appeared
Speaker 1: to have beaten back the virus. The death of a
Speaker 1: seventy year old man comes seven months after the nation
Speaker 1: recorded its first virus cases. The US government pledged its
Speaker 1: biggest investment yet in a vaccine. The Trump administration will
Speaker 1: provide as much as two point one billion dollars in
Speaker 1: funding to vaccine partners Sunafi and Glaxo Smith Klein. The
Speaker 1: funding will support clinical trials and manufacturing, while allowing the
Speaker 1: US to secure one million doses of the shot if
Speaker 1: it's successful. The country has an option to receive an
Speaker 1: additional five hundred million doses. Longer term, the US has
Speaker 1: made billions of dollars and commitments to other experimental vaccines,
Speaker 1: stoking concerns that some countries will be left behind. In England,
Speaker 1: more than four million people are being forced inside a
Speaker 1: large part of the country's northern region must comply with
Speaker 1: new tighter lockdown rules. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is rushing
Speaker 1: to tackle a new spike in cases, and his administration
Speaker 1: has forbidden residents in the Greater Manchester area and parts
Speaker 1: of East Lancashire and West Yorkshire from meeting indoors with
Speaker 1: members of other households. And now for today's main story.
Speaker 1: In the race to study immunity to the virus, scientists
Speaker 1: first focused on antibodies, proteins that stick to and disable
Speaker 1: foreign invaders. That's because creating antibodies is the basis for
Speaker 1: most successful vaccines, so scientists are interested in learning who
Speaker 1: develops coronavirus antibodies, how long they stick around, and how
Speaker 1: effective they are keeping people from getting infected again. But
Speaker 1: recent studies show there may be another weapon inside the
Speaker 1: human body that can rouse fresh antibodies soldiers long after
Speaker 1: the first have left the battlefield. Bloomberg Senior editor Jason
Speaker 1: Gale explains that T cells may be part of the
Speaker 1: key to blunting the coronavirus contagion. Let's start with the
Speaker 1: antibody tests. That is, the possibility of an antibody test
Speaker 1: and showing that COVID antibodies fade quickly, but it's still
Speaker 1: not known if an antibody response will give future imming
Speaker 1: the antibodies. What does that mean? It means these are
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot about antibodies during the pandemic. Having
Speaker 1: specific antibodies against sarsko V two may prevent us from
Speaker 1: catching the virus again. Some governments have suggested that they
Speaker 1: could serve as the basis for an immunity passport or
Speaker 1: risk free certificate that would enable people to travel or
Speaker 1: to return to work, assuming they are protected against reinfection.
Speaker 1: Problem is, there's currently no evidence that people who have
Speaker 1: recovered from COVID nineteen and to have antibodies are protected
Speaker 1: from a second infection. Scientists think they probably do, but
Speaker 1: there's no proof. What's more, these antibodies don't appear to
Speaker 1: stick around lock, at least in people who have had
Speaker 1: a mold b out of the disease. Researchers in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles reported last week the rapid decay of anti Saskvy
Speaker 1: to antibodies and patients who had a mild case of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. They said their findings, published in the New
Speaker 1: England Journal of Medicine, suggested we should treat with caution.
Speaker 1: The idea of immunity passports, as well as the durability
Speaker 1: of any vaccines that are produced, sounds kind of depressing, right, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe not when it comes to the immune system. Antibodies
Speaker 1: aren't a solo act. They're part of an entire orchestra
Speaker 1: of immune defenders that collectively make up our white blood cells.
Speaker 1: In the front row are the innate crew that respond
Speaker 1: to a viral infection immediately and crudely. Then there's a
Speaker 1: more sophisticated bunch of adaptive immune responders that remember what
Speaker 1: games there fought in case they have to do battle
Speaker 1: with them again. Antibodies are one component of that adaptive
Speaker 1: immune response which immunization seeks to create without causing any disease,
Speaker 1: Which are the plants that are made from the cells
Speaker 1: and the ones that bind to a virus and neutralize.
Speaker 1: This is Professor Alessandro setting He's a researcher at Lahoya
Speaker 1: Institute for Immunology in San Diego who has been studying
Speaker 1: the immune system for some forty five years. So if
Speaker 1: you have a high level of antibodies, you can neutralize
Speaker 1: the virus and avoid infection. Alessandro is interested in another
Speaker 1: component of the adaptive immune system, T cells. We recognize
Speaker 1: and destroy effect itselves. This is very important because when
Speaker 1: you have an infection, when a virus gets inside the cell,
Speaker 1: it becomes an invisible for antibodies. We antibodies cannot get
Speaker 1: to it anymore. He's getting inside the cell. Some T
Speaker 1: cells directly kill these virally infected cells. Others play a
Speaker 1: support role, helping to regulate the immune system and remember
Speaker 1: microbial foes. Without a helper T cells, the antibody response
Speaker 1: is weak. Uh, it doesn't find very strongly, doesn't last
Speaker 1: very long. Good news is that Alexandro and his colleagues
Speaker 1: have found that when people are infected with sisk V two,
Speaker 1: they amount a strong T cell response, and unexpectedly, he
Speaker 1: found some people who had never encountered sarask v two
Speaker 1: also had T cells that recognized the pandemic strain, which
Speaker 1: was odd since this is a completely new virus, and
Speaker 1: so this was very puzzling and we we looked at
Speaker 1: this data from right from left, from top from bottom,
Speaker 1: and we really became convinced that this was absolutely real.
Speaker 1: Scientists in the Netherlands, UK, Germany and Singapore have reported
Speaker 1: the same thing, so it's really all over uh, different
Speaker 1: groups and different continents. So this was remarkable. So how
Speaker 1: do you explain how someone whose immune system has never
Speaker 1: seen this coronavirus before as some memory of it. And
Speaker 1: the most reasonable hypothesis, but we want to emphasize that
Speaker 1: this is an hypothesis at this point, is that this
Speaker 1: is due to exposure to common called coronaviruses. There are
Speaker 1: four of them in circulation that caused the usual sore
Speaker 1: throat coffin running knows that we routinely experience in winter.
Speaker 1: Alessandre says Sis givy two is like a cousin of
Speaker 1: these less dangerous coronaviruses. This viruses evil cousin common called corona.
Speaker 1: So if you've seen this other viruses recently, maybe you
Speaker 1: have a little bit of cross ripping. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you have encountered one of these cold causing coronavirus
Speaker 1: is recently, could it give you at least partial immunity.
Speaker 1: Alexandra says scientists are looking into this and are especially
Speaker 1: interested in studying people living on an island off the
Speaker 1: coast of Tuscany, where the incidents of COVID nineteen was
Speaker 1: very low, despite infected travelers from mainland Italy bringing it across.
Speaker 1: That island was reported to have had the year before
Speaker 1: particularly bad common called the season, and so some of
Speaker 1: the people I talked there were speculated, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: has something to do, and I think that they were, uh,
Speaker 1: trying to set up and starting to look at this
Speaker 1: and more details. Alessandra says more research is needed to
Speaker 1: determine whether pre existing T cells that cross react with
Speaker 1: the Sasko V two virus may explain why some COVID
Speaker 1: patients are barely affected while others get very sick and
Speaker 1: even die. Figuring out the role of cells in protecting
Speaker 1: against COVID it's pretty important since these white blood cells
Speaker 1: will be critical for achieving durable immune protection from many
Speaker 1: vaccines that are developed. The immune system is all about memory,
Speaker 1: and so is vaccination. You create a memory, so if
Speaker 1: maybe you have a pre existing little bit of memory response,
Speaker 1: your immune system has a head start compare to someone
Speaker 1: that doesn't. We still don't know yet whether it's possible
Speaker 1: to develop vaccines that will stimulate potent antibodies against aus
Speaker 1: COVID two and prevent someone from getting COVID nineteen. According
Speaker 1: to Alessandro, the hope is that immunization will at least
Speaker 1: generate an immune response that lessens the severity of disease
Speaker 1: and the time it takes to recover from the infection,
Speaker 1: and this should go some way to blunt the pandemic.
Speaker 1: That was Jason Gale, and that's it for our show today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: beers around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com Flash Coronavirus
Speaker 1: and if you like the show, please leave us a
Speaker 1: review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's
Speaker 1: the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting.
Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tophor Foreheads, Jordan Gaspure,
Speaker 1: Magnus Henrickson, and Ni Laura Carlson. Today's main story was
Speaker 1: reported by Jason Gale. Original music by Leo Sedrin. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesca Levi is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.