– Pierre Van Damme. Photo: Frederik Beyens
The Taskforce Vaccination has received many worried emails in recent weeks about people who found no or hardly any antibodies in their body after vaccination with a blood test. “We received quite a few emails from surprised doctors and vaccinees,” says task force member Pierre Van Damme (UAntwerp). “A blood test like this is now often done as a result of a check-up by the GP. Sometimes people ask themselves to check whether the vaccine works if a blood sample is taken for something else. Then they are doubly worried if no antibodies are found.”
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According to Van Damme, those results say little because lab tests look for a different type of antibodies than those that are generated by vaccination. “They do find the antibodies that you make after you’ve had the disease,” he says. “Then it concerns antibodies that attack the coat of the virus. Vaccination produces antibodies against the S protein (which give the coronavirus its characteristic spikes, ed.) excited. They are not picked up by the lab tests.”
The effectiveness of the vaccines has been demonstrated in clinical studies, so tests after vaccination are of little use, according to Van Damme. “In addition, we don’t know exactly how high the concentration of antibodies needs to be to draw conclusions from it.”
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