Explained: How some people stayed COVID free

It has been almost three years since Coronavirus emerged in China and wreaked havoc in the entire world. With many lives lost, economies shaken and lingering long COVID symptoms, among many other things, some people claim to continue to remain uninfected. Is it even possible?

According to the BBC, one estimate in the summer suggested around one-in-10 people in the UK still hadn't been infected.

So is it pure chance or the bodies of these people have some secret to remain untouched by the deadly infection? Read on to find out.

There are several possibilities of why some people may still be able to remain uninfected by Coronavirus.

One of the common reasons could be that these people have actually been infected, but their infection may have been too mild to recognize as COVID or they may have been asymptomatic.

Another reason could be that despite the high infection rate, they may have never come into contact with the virus, probably due to following extreme isolation measures.

Finally, it could be that their bodies have some extra defense to have been able to successfully repel the virus, whenever they came in contact with it.

Antibodies are proteins that the immune system makes to help fight infection and protect the body from getting sick in the future. There are different antibodies which attack, or stick to, different parts of the virus. Antibody tests can detect the presence of antibodies in serum within days to weeks after an acute infection. The tests focus on two types of antibodies –

-Anti-S antibodies which stick to a protein on the surface of the virus called spike

-Anti-N antibodies that stick to an inner layer of the virus called the nucleocapsid, that protects the virus's genetic code. According to the US CDC, testing positive for the N protein indicates resolving or past COVID infection that could have occurred before or after vaccination.

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An August 2022 study published in the journal JAMA Network Open found that 56% of the 210 adults in the study caught the Omicron virus but remained unaware of being infected or mistook their mild symptoms as signs of some other infection.

The authors noted that the lack of awareness of being infected could be a key contributor to rapid transmission of the Coronavirus within communities.

Those who think they have never been infected may be right about not having a full-blown infection, however they could have had an abortive infection.

In this case, when a person is exposed to Coronavirus, the virus even gets into the right places to start an infection, but the body fights it before it can create an impact.

This has also been shown in several studies. In one such study, the virus was squirted up the nose of healthy volunteers, but in the first 34 people to take part, only half of them developed an infection.

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Some people with genetic invulnerability may not get infected because of their rare and lucky genetic mutation that shields them from the virus completely. This is also seen in other diseases such as HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

A mutation in such people’s genetic codes locks their body’s cells so the HIV cannot get inside at all. Similar mutations have been shown to lock Coronavirus out of people's cells, reports BBC. This can aid in the development of next generation treatments.