Some people don’t get COVID despite being exposed to the virus — a mystery researchers are trying to unravel.
Why it matters: Understanding the small cohort of “never COVID” people could lead to new vaccine targets or other protections as the world enters the third year of the pandemic.
Various possibilities for how these people are protected are being tested: immune defenses stemming from other infections, human genetics, viral load or environmental factors. And then there’s simple luck.
The idea of resistant people may be “very intriguing,” but “we don’t know very often why someone did or did not get infected in sufficient detail to nail it,” John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 Response Team, tells Axios.
The bottom line: Vaccination and boosters, wearing masks, washing hands and good ventilation remain our most important tools in preventing infection or mitigating symptoms, Brooks says.
Research into the “never COVID” cohort is important for potential medical countermeasures, but “I hope that people don’t think they’re superhuman” and protected against SARS-CoV-2 just because they haven’t gotten it yet, [immunologist Gigi] Gronvall says.
