New Paper (Other): Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic

[marouenbg]

Title: Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic

General Information

Please paste a link to the paper or a citation here:

Link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/288.full

What is the paper's Manubot-style citation?

Citation: [@doi:10.1126/science.abe9728]

Is this paper primarily relevant to Background or Pathogenesis?

• [ ] Background
• [x] Pathogenesis
• [ ] Methods

Please list some keywords (3-10) that help identify the relevance of this paper to COVID-19

• keyword 1 reinfection
• keyword 2 SARS-CoV-2
• keyword 3 Brazil

Please note the publication / review status

• [ ] Pre-print
• [x] New Peer-Reviewed Paper
• [ ] Peer-Reviewed Paper Pre-2020

Which areas of expertise are particularly relevant to the paper?

• [ ] virology
• [x] epidemiology
• [ ] biostatistics
• [x] immunology
• [ ] pharmacology
• [ ] other:

[marouenbg]

Summary

Suggested questions to answer about each paper:

• What did they analyze? This paper analyzed the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state in northern Brazil.

• What methods did they use? They measured IgG levels in the convalescent plasma of individuals at different times before, during an after the peak of infections.

• Does this paper study COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, or a related disease and/or virus? This paper is about COVID-19 reinfections in the city of Manaus.

• What is the main finding (or a few main takeaways)? The surprising finding of this paper is that the rate of elevated IgG reported in convalescent individual was around 44%, contrary to recent studies that suggest a very high number of IgG positivity such as the SIREN study and other studies #767 #766 #765 .

• What does this paper tell us about the background and/or diagnostics/therapeutics for COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2? Although the overall infection rate in Manaus was very high since the beginning of the infection, the reinfection rates remained high, which contradicts the hypothesis of low reinfections and a sustained immunity by elevated plasma IgG levels.

• Do you have any concerns about methodology or the interpretation of these results beyond this analysis? There a strong discrepancy between this study and other studies mainly conducted in the UK/USA (#767 #766 #765) in terms of the prevalence of IgG levels after SARS-CoV-2 reinfections. The authors used detection kits from different manufacturers to eliminate any bias due to the method. One interesting hypothesis could be linked to differences in the social and economic background between the populations of Manaus and American or British cities were other studies were done. This highlights the importance of context in projecting results about COVID-19.

Any comments or notes?

In the end, the paper highlighted that the discrepancy in the results between the Brazilian city and Western cities was also confirmed for results in India and Kenya. Social and economic factors such as overcrowding could be the cause in rapid transmission of the virus.