Half of People in UK Have CCP Virus Antibodies: ONS Data

A nurse takes a swab at a COVID-19 drive-through testing station for NHS staff in Chessington, United Kingdom, on March 30, 2020. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Half of Brits are now likely have antibodies to the CCP virus—from either natural immune response or from vaccination—according to official modeling based on blood samples.

The latest infection survey data from the Office for National Statistics estimate that in England over 54 percent of people would have tested positive for antibodies to the Communist Party Virus (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

For those aged over 65 in England—all of whom have been offered the vaccine—over eight out of ten people had antibodies.

For those between the ages of 16 and 65, fewer than 60 percent had antibodies, with estimates as low as around one in four for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The data covers the week ending 14 March.

Two months earlier, just one in seven people had antibodies.

“The upward trend in antibody positivity in the latest data will principally be because more and more people are being vaccinated, since the level of actual virus infections is fairly low across all the UK countries,” Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, said in a statement.

“The effect of vaccinations also shows up clearly in the figures for the percentage who would test positive for antibodies at different ages. Rates of testing positive are much the highest in the older age groups, where many people have already received at least one dose of vaccine.”

The ONS estimates do not include data from people in hospitals, care homes, or other institutional settings.

So far, half of all adults in the UK—a total of over 30 million—have received their first dose of a vaccine, with over 3 million having received their second and final jab.

Last week, vaccinations reached record levels with over 840,000 people receiving the jab on one day. Currently, on average over 500,000 people receive their jabs every day.

Meanwhile, deaths from the pandemic have continued to drop, with overall death rates from all causes below the 5-year average.

On Sunday, for the second time this year, London reported not a single death attributed to the CCP virus.

Hospitalizations are still dropping, now at around one-tenth of the levels during the peak in mid January.

Infection rates are also continuing to drop, both according to the government’s statistics taken from sample tests and according to the ZOE COVID survey.

That survey keeps tabs on infection rates almost real-time through data uploaded by people via a phone app about their symptoms.

While antibodies are generally strongly associated with immunity, they don’t protect against every disease. Conversely, immunity against some diseases doesn’t depend on antibodies, but instead can rely on other mechanisms, including T-cells.