When Covid-19 shut down the US economy in March, Elon Musk had a missile to launch.
SpaceX, the billionaire space exploration company, planned to launch a manned spacecraft into the sky in May and wanted to stay on track. That meant finding a way to keep the facilities open safely and limit the spread of Covid-19, a challenge when tests were scarce.
To monitor the prevalence of the virus among SpaceX workers across the country, Mr. Musk and the rocket company’s top medical manager teamed up with doctors and academic researchers to establish an antibody testing program. More than 4,000 SpaceX employees have volunteered for monthly blood tests.
This week, the group published its findings, suggesting that a certain threshold of antibodies could provide people with lasting protection against the virus. Mr. Musk is listed as a co-author of the peer-reviewed study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.
“People can have antibodies, but that doesn’t mean they will be immune” to Covid-19, said Galit Alter, a co-author of the study who is a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. Subjects who had fewer, milder Covid-19 symptoms produced fewer antibodies and therefore were less likely to meet the longer-term immunity threshold, the study found.