RIVM will measure antibodies in the blood at several moments over the coming months. With the results, RIVM wants to gain more insight into the spread of the virus and the development of group immunity among all age groups. Everyone who comes into contact with the virus produces antibodies. By measuring those substances in the blood, it becomes clear how many people in the Dutch population have been exposed to the virus.
PIENTER research
The participants in this study are people who previously participated in the so-called “PIENTER study”. This is a long-term study among the Dutch population into the defense against infectious diseases. In the third round of that study, approximately seven thousand people aged 0 to 90 years participated in 2016 and 2017. “We will approach that group and ask: do you want to donate something again?”, Explains Harald Wychgel.
Finger prick at home
RIVM has retained blood with the permission of those people. The institute will ask those people to donate blood again, with a finger prick. The invitees receive a short questionnaire and a finger prick set. With the set they have to fill a tube with a few drops of blood themselves and send it back to RIVM by post. So they can do the research at home. ,, We can compare this blood with each other. This provides us with important information about the spread of the virus and the development of group immunity, “explains the RIVM. “So we are investigating in the period before, during and after the outbreak of the new coronavirus.”
This study will be repeated several times over the next year and a half. “After each round, we can learn more about the building of group immunity in the population,” RIVM explains. “We are also investigating how long these antibodies remain in the blood and whether they are of good quality. Then we know whether we are well able to combat a second infection in the longer term. “The results of the first round are expected in May.
Blood banks
The RIVM study takes place in addition to a population study of the Dutch blood banks. With a new blood test, researchers from the Dutch blood banks will also be conducting a national population screening for the new corona virus. The aim is also to find out how widely the virus is spread and how quickly society builds up immunity to the disease. “The more you know about the distribution within the BV Netherlands, the better,” explains RIVM spokesman the duplication of the two studies that take place simultaneously.
The first results of the Dutch blood banks are expected this month. This test is performed on blood from tens of thousands of blood and plasma donors from the Sanquin blood bank. Sanquin professor and physician-microbiologist Hans Zaaijer said earlier: “We start with ten thousand people, which are all people who donate blood in one week in the Netherlands.”
When is the Netherlands able to cope with corona?
Those who have had the coronavirus are usually immune afterwards. If there are enough people there, then there is group immunity. A wall is then built, as it were, around the vulnerable people who are still susceptible, and the virus hardly gets a chance to jump from person to person. With vaccinations you also create this herd immunity, but a vaccine is still lacking for the coronavirus. Therefore, now that the virus can no longer be kept small, the Netherlands is not opting for total social exclusion. RIVM director Jaap van Dissel: ,, In fact, you have to pass the virus on to the group that can handle it, protecting the vulnerable elderly people from it. Then you finally have – after a while – that the population as a whole is protected against the reintroduction of the virus. ” Experts estimate that group immunity occurs “when 50 to 60 percent of the population has been exposed to the virus and has recovered.”
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