The number of blood donors with antibodies has been widely investigated by the Sanquin blood bank. The figures have been requested by the AD.
Several hundred thousand people
Sanquin conducted the study for the first time in early April. The blood bank then examined about 4000 blood samples from Dutch donors. These are randomly selected donors, representative of the Dutch population. Those results showed that 3 percent of blood donors had antibodies. That amounts to several hundred thousand people.
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In the meantime, 7000 blood samples have been examined and the percentage of blood samples with antibodies has risen to 5.5 percent. According to physician microbiologist Hans Zaaijer, the increase from 3 percent to 5.5 percent is relatively small, but according to expectations.
‘Lockdown measures effective’
“This ties in with the data that the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) shows about the declining spread of the infection in the Netherlands,” he says in the AD. “The lockdown measures are effective, reducing the number of people infected.”
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However, that also means that it doesn’t get along with group immunity. 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.
Need a vaccine
It is not 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.
Zaaijer fears that this will take a while. “It may take another two years before group immunity is reached in the Netherlands. A vaccine is simply needed.”
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