Covid-19: what if the common cold could protect against Omicron? – LCI

What if the natural defenses induced by a simple cold offered some protection against Covid-19 and in particular Omicron? This is in essence the conclusion reached by researchers at Imperial College London after studying 52 people living with patients just infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The study, published in Nature Communications, concluded that those who had contracted a classic cold had also developed a “memory bank” specific immune cells capable of preventing future infections and making them less vulnerable to Covid.

While experts insist that this new data is not enough to ignore the vaccine, which remains the only effective protection to date against the virus, they believe that it provides useful information on how the system works. defense.

“We have found that high levels of pre-existing T cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses such as the common cold, can protect against infection with COVID-19” details Doctor Rhia Kundu, author of the study with the English media Sky News, while stressing that coronaviruses only represent 10 to 15% of colds. It would therefore be a “big mistake” to think that anyone who has recently caught a cold is automatically protected against Covid-19, he insists.

In contrast, “learning what the body does right could help design new vaccines”, estimates Professor Ajit Lalvani, co-author of the study, specifying that “Vaccines that more closely exploit the work of T cells could provide broader and more lasting protection against Covid.”