NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — As we’ve said on many occasions, medical knowledge about the novel coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes is a rapidly evolving science with new and sometimes contradictory studies coming out almost daily. There’s encouraging news about a British vaccine and a new study from Mt. Sinai that supports the vaccine report. Researchers are having promising results with an experimental vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca. The study in the Lancet looked at more than 1,000 healthy adults and found the vaccine induced strong antibody and other immune responses. “What this vaccine does particularly well is trigger both arms of the immune system. So in addition to neutralizing antibodies, which other vaccines do, we also see a very strong T-Cell response,” said professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. That means that both antibodies that can neutralize the COVID-19 virus were produced, as well as T-Cells, which are the primary killers of virus infected cells.
The response lasted at least two months after they were immunized.
In a separate study, researchers at New York’s Mt. Sinai found that more than 90% of infected individuals with mild to moderate COVID-19 make high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the coronavirus and that antibody levels remain high for at least three months.
While these findings will still have to be squared with previous contradictory studies, they are encouraging signs. Oxford and its pharma partner Astrazeneca are proceeding with 10,000 volunteer trails in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.