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Blood bank: 3 percent of blood samples contain corona antibodies

Sanquin examines blood samples from a total of 7000 Dutch donors. These are randomly selected donors, representative of the Dutch population. Today’s results relate to the first 4000 samples tested.


‘First indication’

According to physician microbiologist Hans Zaaijer, the result gives a ‘good first indication’. “This test reflects the first four weeks of the outbreak,” said Zaaijer.

The next test series should provide more insight into the speed at which the virus spreads among the population. “It will be more interesting to repeat the test in four weeks, so that we can see how the growth is progressing.”


People should only donate blood if they are healthy. So the three percent who had antibodies against the coronavirus in their blood had already been diseased at the time of the donation.

Group immunity

Zaaijer expects the percentage of people with antibodies to be higher in the next test. This is important for the development of group immunity: the more people who have been infected with the corona virus and produce antibodies, the less chance the virus has of spreading.

At the moment, according to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), there is still no question of group immunity. It is not yet known what percentage of the population must have had the virus for this, but experts at Sanquin state that when 60 percent of the Dutch are immune, the virus has no chance of spreading further.


Results anonymously

People whose blood has been tested will not hear the results themselves. That’s because about one in ten times the test incorrectly gives a positive result. That is reliable enough to make statements about a large group, but Sanquin does not share the results with donors themselves. “You don’t want to sell people nonsense,” says Zaaijer.

Sanquin knows that the test is sometimes incorrectly positive, because they also tested blood samples from far before the corona outbreak. They should all be negative, but in about 1 in 10 cases, a positive result was achieved. This could be because the test is contaminated, for example.


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