Scientists now have a map for how Coronavirus infects the human body

• Scientists now have a map for how the human immune system responds to a Coronavirus infection.
• Using that information, the researchers were able to correctly predict when a patient will recover from an infection.
• The study published in Nature Medicine was able to identify four types of immune cells.
• The discovery could ‘fast track’ a potential cure, according to Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt.

The hunt for a cure to the Coronavirus may not be on the market yet, but scientists are scrambling to understand how the infection works — in order to thump it out for good.

A team of researchers in Australia now have a map for how the human immune system responds to a Covid-19 infection by studying some of the first people who were diagnosed with the disease.

With a map to guide them, scientists can predict the course of the virus. They were able to identify four types of immune cells, according to the study published in Nature Medicine. According to Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt, this could help ‘fast-track’ a potential vaccine.

Being able to predict when a person will recover from coronavirus
A 47-year old woman from Wuhan who recovered within 14 days had specific cells in her bloodstream, which corresponded to the same type of cells in influenza patients before they recover.

“Three days after the patient was admitted, we saw large populations of several immune cells, which are often a tell-tale sign of recovery during seasonal influenza infection, so we predicted that the patient would recover in three days, which is what happened,” aid Oanh Nguyen, co-author of the study.

The next step for the scientists is to figure out why the immune system response was weaker in other patients. However, they assert that even though Covid-19 is something new — a healthy immune system has the tools to fight it off.

“We showed that even though COVID-19 is caused by a new virus, in an otherwise healthy person, a robust immune response across different cell types was associated with clinical recovery, similar to what we see in influenza,” said Katherine Kadzierska, who also collaborated on the study.

Meanwhile, the world’s fastest supercomputer is also on the job trying to find a cure for Coronavirus. It has identified 77 different compounds which prevent Covid-19 from spreading once it has infected its host. IBM’s massive Summit supercomputer also helped scientists create a 3D map of one of the proteins within the virus, which is key to the infection’s replication process.

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