This is the new challenge that immunologists face regarding a virus such as SARS-CoV-2, now looking at it face to face as we are gradually leaving the lockdown.

Professor of Immunology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon and deputy director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Bruno Silva-Santos explains that what is always intended is “to attain a balance in living with the virus, which we call ‘herd immunity’”. Accustomed to reacting to the environment of microbial infections, immunologists seeks to study the virus by adjusting the responses, while testing the perfect formula that becomes a vaccine to combat transmissibility.

Despite the good perspectives of clinical trials that are getting close to this perfect vaccine solution, immunology is important for “serological tests, as a way of detecting the presence of specific antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the serum of a blood sample".

Realizing “how common the incidence of infection is, including asymptomatic cases that tend to go unnoticed”, it will then be possible to monitor possible “herd immunity”, thus putting a brake on the advance of this pandemic.

Read the article written by the professor for newspaper Público,  not to be missed!