- Elon Musk’s SpaceX company regularly tested a group of employees for COVID-19 antibodies.
- 4,300 employees signed up for a study of possible links between antibodies and immunity.
- “People may have antibodies, but that doesn’t mean they will be immune,” said one of the study’s authors.
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SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company, has used its employees to conduct a COVID-19 antibody study, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The results of the study were made public in a peer-reviewed article published in Nature Communications, which lists Elon Musk as a co-author.
According to the study, SpaceX sent an email to staff asking for volunteers to participate in a regular antibody study to study COVID-19. After that email was sent, 4,300 SpaceX employees signed up to collect blood every month so they could be tested for antibodies.
According to the Journal, Anil Menon, the top medical manager of Musk and SpaceX, worked to recruit several doctors and academics to design the study.
The published study includes data stretching from April – when testing began – and June, although testing is still being done regularly, according to the Journal.
The study provides more information about the ongoing efforts to understand how COVID-19 works and whether a certain number of antibodies could provide some level of immunity.
The study’s findings suggest that people who had only mild COVID-19 symptoms developed fewer antibodies, which could mean that they are less likely to have long-term immunity and, therefore, could be reinfected.
Researchers still working on the study told the Journal that they have already seen some cases of reinfection in workers who were previously found to have low antibody counts.
“People can have antibodies, but that doesn’t mean they will be immune,” said Dr. Galit Alter, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told the Journal. “The good news is that most induce vaccines [antibody] levels much higher than these levels, ”added Dr. Alter.
Scientists are still investigating whether catching COVID-19 provides any kind of lasting immunity.
Dr. Alter also told the Journal that Elon Musk had a personal interest in the study, and the study authors let themselves and SpaceX executives educate themselves about how vaccines and antibodies work.
SpaceX was able to repurpose the medical facilities it had already set up before the pandemic, recruiting interns from nearby hospitals to help draw the volunteers’ blood. Of the 4,300 volunteers 120 who tested positive for COVID-19, their blood was carefully examined to see how many antibodies they had produced. Of these 120, 61% reported no symptoms.
Of that 120-person sample, 92% were male and the median age was 31. The larger sample was 84.3% male with a median age of 32 – although the age ranged from 18 to 71.
Elon Musk himself said he tested positive for coronavirus in November last year, and in the early months of the pandemic, the billionaire repeatedly expressed frustration with lockdown measures they called “ fascist. ” At one point, he defied a shelter order to open his Tesla factory in Alameda County, California, after which several employees tested positive for the coronavirus.