A leading immunologist has outlined four main reasons why some people are immune to coronavirus.
Dr Cliona O'Farrelly revealed that socio-economic backgrounds, general good health, careful behaviour, and a rare innate immune response all play a part in immunity to Covid-19. Dr O'Farrelly said: "How people live has got a lot to do with their circumstances and then on top of that then is this percentage of people who have what we would call an innate immune signature, that's what we're looking for.
"The innate immune signature that identifies the resistance so I think those four things are really important."
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Dr O'Farrelly has also for several years worked on a study about women who contracted Hepatitis C through blood transplants and why some women did not contract the virus. which she believes is down to the innate immune response, similar to Covid-19.
She explained: "We do have data now that the women who did not become infected had a more innate immune response, that's an immune response that kicks in immediately on encountering the virus and it is the part of the immune system that is right at the site of where the virus is."
"A whole lot of people are not becoming infected because they're being super careful and they're to be congratulated. But in addition to the people who are not getting it because they're very careful there are those with an innate immune system, and we believe that the innate immune system is able to keep the virus away without becoming infected at all."
According to Dr O'Farrelly, there is currently a huge international consortium that is studying people from 40 countries who have not become infected from Covid-19 despite being close contacts of the virus.
At the moment, they are seeking people from Ireland who have never had covid to take part in the large study.
Dr O'Farrelly said: "Ideally we are looking for people who have resisted the virus twice, during the first wave and more recently with the Omicron and ideally we need people whose partner was PCR positive while they shared a room with them and they remained PCR negative."
She said that the study is looking for "genetic markers" of resistance to infection.
She said: "It means having to sequence the whole genome of the people and it's like looking in a hay stack, because the human genome is so variable but we are anticipating that we will see some mutations in the innate immune gene that give people resistance."
When asked about the future, Dr O'Farrelly said that we can expect more variants to emerge, she said: "Unfortunately, this is going to go on. This virus is swirling around and so we are so privileged in this country to be vaccinated several times with boosters and more vaccines coming down. It's going to keep coming back until the whole world is immune really."
Anyone who is interested in signing up to the new study on Covid-19 resistance can click here
