TY - JOUR
AU - Thompson, Craig P.
AU - Grayson, Nicholas E.
AU - Paton, Robert S.
AU - Bolton, Jai
AU - Lourenço, José
AU - Penman, Bridget S.
AU - Lee, Liam N.
AU - Odon, Valerie
AU - Mongkolsapaya, Juthathip
AU - Chinnakannan, Senthil
AU - Dejnirattisai, Wanwisa
AU - Edmans, Matthew
AU - Fyfe, Alex
AU - Imlach, Carol
AU - Kooblall, Kreepa
AU - Lim, Nicholas
AU - Liu, Chang
AU - López-Camacho, César
AU - McInally, Carol
AU - McNaughton, Anna L
AU - Ramamurthy, Narayan
AU - Ratcliff, Jeremy
AU - Supasa, Piyada
AU - Sampson, Oliver
AU - Wang, Beibei
AU - Mentzer, Alexander J.
AU - Turner, Marc
AU - Semple, Malcolm G.
AU - Baillie, J. Kenneth
AU - ISARIC4C Investigators
AU - Harvala, Heli
AU - Screaton, Gavin R
AU - Temperton, Nigel
AU - Klenerman, Paul
AU - Jarvis, Lisa
AU - Gupta, Sunetra
AU - Simmonds, Peter
PY - 2020
DA - October
TI - Detection of neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 to determine population exposure in Scottish blood donors between March and May 2020
JO - Eurosurveillance
VL - 25
IS - 42
DO - https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.42.2000685
AB - Background: The progression and geographical distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere is unknown because typically only symptomatic individuals are diagnosed. We performed a serological study of blood donors in Scotland in the spring of 2020 to detect neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 as a marker of past infection and epidemic progression.  Aim: Our objective was to determine if sera from blood bank donors can be used to track the emergence and progression of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.  Methods: A pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 virus microneutralisation assay was used to detect neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. The study comprised samples from 3,500 blood donors collected in Scotland between 17 March and 18 May 2020. Controls were collected from 100 donors in Scotland during 2019.  Results: All samples collected on 17 March 2020 (n=500) were negative in the pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 virus microneutralisation assay. Neutralising antibodies were detected in six of 500 donors from 23 to 26 March. The number of samples containing neutralising antibodies did not significantly rise after 5-6 April until the end of the study on 18 May. We found that infections were concentrated in certain postcodes, indicating that outbreaks of infection were extremely localised. In contrast, other areas remained comparatively untouched by the epidemic.  Conclusion: Although blood donors are not representative of the overall population, we demonstrated that serosurveys of blood banks can serve as a useful tool for tracking the emergence and progression of an epidemic such as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.
PB - European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/7eab2311-cf26-4263-9acf-fc648c5e2ba8
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
ER