When Covid-19 closed the US economy in March, Elon Musk had a rocket to launch.
The billionaire’s space exploration venture, SpaceX, was planning to blow up a manned spacecraft in the sky in May and wanted to stick to the schedule. That meant finding a way to keep the facility open safely and limiting the spread of Covid-19, a challenge when testing was scarce.
To monitor the prevalence of the virus among SpaceX employees across the country, Musk and the rocket company’s chief medical officer worked with doctors and academic researchers to build an antibody testing program. More than 4,000 SpaceX employees volunteered to have monthly blood tests.
This week, the group published its findings, which suggest that a certain limit of antibodies can provide people with lasting protection against the virus. Musk is listed as a co-author of the peer-reviewed study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.
“People may 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 experienced less mild Covid-19 symptoms generated less antibodies and therefore were less likely to reach the limit for long-term immunity, the study concluded.