Full title: Estimated protection against COVID-19 based on predicted neutralisation titres from multiple antibody measurements in a longitudinal cohort, France, April 2020 to November 2021
Eurosurveillance
Woudenberg T, Pinaud L, Garcia L, Tondeur L, Pelleau S, De Thoisy A, Donnadieu F, Backovic M, Attia M, Hozé N, Duru C, Koffi AD, Castelain S, Ungeheuer MN, Fernandes Pellerin S, Planas D, Bruel T, Cauchemez S, Schwartz O, Fontanet A, White M.
Key public health message What did you want to address in this study? We wanted to measure the protection against COVID-19 in the population, after much build-up of immunity following transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and vaccinations. Measuring SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies in blood samples can indicate previous infection and vaccination coverage in a population. To date, population-wide antibody testing has not been able to provide quantitative estimates of protection against COVID-19. What have we learnt from this study? We measured antibody levels to SARS-CoV-2 in 905 individuals, and used these to predict how protective these antibodies are against COVID-19. How protective these antibodies were translated into estimates of population-level immunity. Protection was better with more vaccinations. What are the implications of your findings for public health? Our novel method allowed us to go beyond seroprevalence estimates and enabled us to assess the protection against COVID-19 in a large population sample. Using our serological laboratory test with variant-specific antibodies, we showed that we were able to identify under-protected individuals who may be targeted with additional vaccine doses.
More information at 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2023.28.25.2200681