{"id":362416,"date":"2026-03-24T11:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/362416\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T11:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:01:09","slug":"covid-19-immunity-likely-to-lower-risk-of-another-sars-pandemic-study-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/362416\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 immunity likely to lower risk of another SARS pandemic \u2013 study \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global immunity to Covid-19 is likely to offer protection against other SARS-type viruses, ultimately lowering the risk of a future coronavirus pandemic, scientists have found.<\/p>\n

Researchers led by a team at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) combined information from patient antibody samples with mathematical modelling to examine levels of immunity against SARS-type viruses in the general population.<\/p>\n

They found that as well as high levels of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, the population also had immunity against a range of \u201csarbecoviruses\u201d \u2013 the wider family of viruses to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs.<\/p>\n

They said Covid-19 immunity, whether from infections during the pandemic or vaccinations, could even provide a \u201cbiological barrier\u201d against sarbecoviruses that have not been discovered yet.<\/p>\n

\"Victoria<\/a>\"BP<\/a><\/p>\n

They suggested this broader immunity may be key to slowing down, or stopping, a future pandemic by a previously unknown sarbecovirus.<\/p>\n

Pablo Murcia, professor of integrative virology from the CVR, said: \u201cOur global experience with Covid-19 has generated a biological barrier to other coronaviruses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this does not mean we are immune to all future threats, infection and vaccine-derived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 has made it much harder for other sarbecoviruses to start the next pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur study shows the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in the general population, alongside global vaccination campaigns, generated widespread immunity against related sarbecoviruses, creating an \u2018immunity shield\u2019 against the emergence of a novel sarbecovirus in humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team also found existing Covid-19 vaccines could help slow or stop the spread of any potential new sarbecovirus, dubbed \u201cSARS-CoV-X\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"ResearchersResearchers said Covid-19 could provide a \u2018biological barrier\u2019 against an as-yet-undiscovered sarbecovirus (Victoria Jones\/PA) <\/p>\n

Brian Willett, professor of viral immunology at the CVR, said: \u201cOur results suggest that our current vaccines might be effective against the emergence of a new coronavirus.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mathematical models strongly suggest that the use of existing Covid-19 vaccines against any new and emerging sarbecoviruses reduced the chance of sustained transmission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that current vaccines would be most beneficial if implemented soon after the first SARS-CoV-X case was found.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy contrast, delays in implementing any preventative vaccination would likely reduce its effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study, Post-pandemic changes in population immunity have reduced the likelihood of emergence of zoonotic coronaviruses, is published in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n

The work was funded by the UKRI Medical Research Council (MRC), and the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global immunity to Covid-19 is likely to offer protection against other SARS-type viruses, ultimately lowering the risk of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[158,160,103,61,60,9301,82,9036,1577,21192],"class_list":["post-362416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pandemic","tag-science","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-university-of-glasgow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}