Immunity to COVID-19 in the Maltese population is likely to be on the low side, according to early indications from a local study.

Extensive research into this crucial aspect of the fight against the novel coronavirus has reached its final stages.

Malta’s immunity rate will be announced in the coming days, Mater Dei Hospital’s pathology department head professor Chris Barbara said.

Barbara said some of the data was still being reviewed and the numbers being computed, but he suggested the immunity rate could be much lower than in some other countries because “the people were protected”. 

So far, 618 people have tested positive for the virus in Malta.

Together with other public health experts, Barbara has been working on immunity research for weeks, analysing blood samples from both those who tested positive for the virus and those who had not.

“We already have an idea of the situation and it will be announced soon,” he said.

He explained that immunity rates were not always straightforward and did not necessarily reflect the number of cases in a country. In some places where the number of patients with the novel coronavirus was on the high side, the authorities had still discovered immunity to be on the low side.

With an estimated 15 to 21 per cent of Malta’s COVID-19 patients being asymptomatic – they showed none of the usual signs of the infection – establishing the rate of immunity is even more pertinent as it could indicate how many people might have contracted the virus and developed immunity without even knowing they were infected.

Knowing the immunity rate is crucial as it helps professionals understand what they are dealing with ahead of rolling out a vaccine, Barbara said.

“We are looking at this to know how the people will respond to a vaccine. That will help us understand whether this vaccine will help us combat the outbreak and to what extent,” he said.

Barbara also urged people to be careful when making use of the so-called ‘antibody testing kits’, saying a lot of them were fake.

The health authorities, he said, had been trying to identify which of these kits is reliable.

Last week, Superintendent of Public Health Charmaine Gauci confirmed the authorities had finalised validation of the antibody tests they would be using to detect if someone has already had the disease and may have developed immunity.

Though health experts around the world emphasise that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, researchers are now working on trying to quantify how many people have contracted the virus.

Population tests in large cities suggest numbers are still in the single digits and nowhere close to the 60 per cent mark that would mean most of the population is immune to the disease – also referred to as herd immunity.

In Stockholm, for instance, only about seven per cent of the population have been found to have the antibodies despite the high number of cases registered.

No new cases

No new COVID-19 cases were registered from 987 swab tests carried out in the previous 24 hours, the health authorities reported on Facebook yesterday.

There were also nine recoveries, bringing the total number of active cases down to 75, the lowest since May 14, when there were 73.

The recoveries now total 534. Nine people have died.

This was the eighth consecutive day with fewer than five new daily cases and the third day with no new positive tests in a week.