When Covid-19 closed the U.S. economy in March, Elon Musk had a rocket to launch.
The billionaire’s space exploration company, SpaceX, planned to launch a manned spacecraft into the sky in May and wanted to stay on schedule. This meant finding a way to keep the facilities open safely and limit the spread of Covid-19, a challenge when testing was scarce.
To monitor the prevalence of the virus among SpaceX workers across the country, Mr. Musk and the rocket company’s top medical executive worked with doctors and academic researchers to build an antibody testing program. More than 4,000 SpaceX workers volunteered for the monthly blood tests.
This week, the group released its findings, which suggest that a certain antibody threshold could provide people with lasting protection against the virus. Mr. Musk is co-author of the peer-reviewed study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.
“People can have antibodies, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune,” Covid-19 said Galit Alter, co-author of the study, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. People who experienced fewer symptoms of milder Covid-19 generated fewer antibodies and were therefore less likely to reach the long-term immunity threshold, according to the study.