- Published
- 10 February 2022
- Journal article
SARS-CoV-2 antibodies protect against reinfection for at least 6 months in a multicentre seroepidemiological workplace cohort
- Authors
-
- Source
- PLoS Biology
Abstract
Identifying the potential for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome : Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reinfection is crucial for understanding possible long-term epidemic dynamics. We analysed longitudinal PCR and serological testing data from a prospective cohort of 4,411 United States employees in 4 states between April 2020 and February 2021. We conducted a multivariable logistic regression investigating the association between baseline serological status and subsequent PCR test result in order to calculate an odds ratio for reinfection. We estimated an odds ratio for reinfection ranging from 0.14 (95% CI: 0.019 to 0.63) to 0.28 (95% CI: 0.05 to 1.1), implying that the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at baseline is associated with around 72% to 86% reduced odds of a subsequent PCR positive test based on our point estimates. This suggests that primary infection with SARS-CoV-2 provides protection against reinfection in the majority of individuals, at least over a 6-month time period. We also highlight 2 major sources of bias and uncertainty to be considered when estimating the relative risk of reinfection, confounders, and the choice of baseline time point and show how to account for both in reinfection analysis.
Rights
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Cite as
Finch, E., Lowe, R., Fischinger, S., de St Aubin, M., Siddiqui, S., Dayal, D., Rhee, J., Beger, S., Hu, Y., Gluck, M., Mormann, B., Hasdianda, M., Musk, E., Alter, G., Menon, A., Nilles, E., Kucharski, A., CMMID COVID-19 Working Group & SpaceX COVID-19 Cohort Collaborative 2022, 'SARS-CoV-2 antibodies protect against reinfection for at least 6 months in a multicentre seroepidemiological workplace cohort', PLoS Biology, 20(2), article no: e3001531. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001531