Tag Archives: Jesse Bloom

How an Ill-Fated Fishing Voyage Helped Us Understand Coronavirus

F/V American Dynasty, a commercial trawler, departed Seattle one day in May to fish for hake off the Washington coast. Before leaving, its 122 crew members were screened for the coronavirus using the highly accurate polymerase chain reaction (P.C.R.) method, and all the results came back negative. But because those tests are “good but not perfect,” they missed at least one case: Somehow SARS-CoV-2 found its way on board. When a crew member fell seriously ill, the vessel returned to port, and almost everyone was tested for the virus again,,, The finding is believed to be the first direct evidence that antibodies protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans, and it offers clues about what sort of concentrations might be needed to confer immunity. >click to read< 10:24