Elon Musk got 4,000 SpaceX workers to participate in a COVID-19 study. Here’s what he learned.

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.

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“People may have antibodies, but that doesn’t mean they will be immune” to Covid-19, said Galit Alter, co-author of the study that 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.

The idea is that other researchers are exploring as they and public health officials try to understand Covid-19’s immunity.

“To really get it right on a public health level, it would be necessary to do reinfection studies and follow people for reinfection” over time, said Joshua T. Schiffer, associate professor in the vaccine and infectious diseases division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center .

As vaccines slowly spread around the world, scientists who have studied SpaceX employees say their findings can be used to inform who is most vulnerable to the virus and should be vaccinated first. For example, those without antibodies in areas with a high case count could be given priority, Alter said.

Companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. offer Covid-19 diagnostic tests to get an instant snapshot of those who are infected. Few companies regularly test workers’ blood samples for antibodies.

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Representatives of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the official name of the privately held company in Southern California, declined to comment on the tests.

Mr. Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Inc. and condemned closing orders, took a personal interest in the research and got scientists to tell him and SpaceX’s top executives during the pandemic how antibodies and vaccines work . Alter said.

Musk in November said he tested positive for the virus. “Mild colds and coughs and mild fever in the last few days,” he tweeted at the time.

Dr. Alter, who studies immunology and the molecular mechanisms of how antibodies fight disease, created the high-performance Covid-19 antibody test earlier this year. His work has attracted investments from hedge fund manager Nancy Zimmerman, former Soros Fund Management CEO Mark Schwartz and his wife Lisa Schwartz, as well as a number of philanthropic companies (including the Musk Foundation) and government agencies.

In April 2020, when Covid’s tests were scarce, SpaceX contacted Eric Nilles, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard, and he asked Dr. Alter for help.

Together with SpaceX’s medical director, Anil Menon, they built a testing program. SpaceX recruited workers from California to Florida who were willing to have blood tests every month starting in April.

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Before the pandemic, Dr. Menon set up medical facilities at SpaceX workplaces across the country. SpaceX sent astronauts with the aim of eventually sending civilians into orbit. He used some of these facilities to rapidly increase blood collection stations and recruited inpatients from local hospitals to collect samples.

In May, SpaceX launched a successful test flight of its Dragon capsule in Florida carrying two astronauts.

In June, samples that Dr. Alter processed from local workers predicted worsening cases in Texas. Instead of a typical 3% positive rate for the virus, 12% of the samples suggested infection. She went over them several times and confirmed they were correct, which prompted the company to send infected workers home and advise them to isolate.

Of the nearly 4,000 SpaceX employees tested several times, 300 were infected with Covid-19. The researchers had enough data on 120 people to deepen their infections and subsequent levels of antibodies to draw conclusions from the study.

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The average age of this small sample was 31, and 92% of them were male, which the authors acknowledge may distort their findings because people of different ages and backgrounds have different immune system responses. The study included test results between April and June.

“The good news is that most vaccines induce [antibody] much higher levels than these levels “for people taking both doses, Alter said.” So far, it is quite clear that we are reaching orders of magnitude higher levels with vaccination.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that having antibodies can provide some protection, but it is not known how long it can last. Researchers and diagnostic companies are working to understand what level of antibodies confer immunity.

“It would be great to have a clear numerical cut to say … above this level [of antibodies] you’re protected, not under you, but we don’t have that limit now, “said Philip Dormitzer, head of viral vaccine research and development at Pfizer Inc.

SpaceX and its research partners continue testing each month and are now monitoring reinfection, especially as the mutations spread, said researchers involved in these efforts. So far, they have observed some reinfection among workers who had low levels of Covid-19 antibodies in previous tests.

In November, the company launched four astronauts in orbit as part of its first operational mission with humans on board.

–Daniela Hernandez contributed to this article.