At first glance the small group of women chatting in the Italian town of Vo’ Euganeo appear perfectly normal.
There is nothing to indicate that the women — a pensioner, a former hotel employee and a local council worker — have a special quality that makes them fascinating for scientists and, potentially, the envy of millions.
Blood tests, however, show that each one is teeming with more than double the number of antibodies normally found in those who have had Covid-19: enough to see off the virus and then some.
“Let’s just say I have a few more antibodies than most,” says Maria Tosetto, 59, with a twinkle.
The presence of such super-immune cases is the latest discovery in Vo’ Euganeo — Vo’ for short — the tiny rural town of 3,275 near Padua that became a living laboratory for research when Europe’s first virus death occurred there on February 21, 2020.
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Covid-19 was erupting around northern Italy and, as the world watched, Vo’ was one of numerous towns sealed off by soldiers for two weeks but the only one where doctors descended to swab 2,812 locals.
The soldiers have long departed but the doctors remained, continuing to test and discovering that antibodies produced by locals after a bout of Covid-19 were still going strong nine months on, longer than some experts predicted. “We also found that in some cases their antibody levels rose, rather than faded, over that time,” Enrico Lavezzo, a microbiologist from the University of Padua, which is running the tests, said.
Lavezzo and colleagues reached the conclusion by testing 2,602 locals for antibodies in May and establishing that 162 had immunity thanks to contagion back in February or early March. Most of the 162 were among a group of 156 tested again nine months later in November, at which point 129 still had antibodies.
“Over half of the 129 showed a decline in antibodies nine months on, but still plenty to ward off the virus,” Lavezzo, 39, said. The team found that former sufferers who had symptoms during their Covid bout maintained their antibody level better over time if they had a higher Body Mass Index. In some tests, the older the subjects were the longer their antibodies remained.
The stand-out finding, however, was the 16 subjects whose antibodies in November were more than double the level they had back in May. “We think it is because they had a contact with a positive after May,” Lavezzo said. “The virus entered their body, infected a few cells but was quickly eliminated by the antibodies they already had. But something else happened: the virus stimulated the production of even more antibodies. None had any symptoms.”
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Nine of the sixteen revealed possible contacts with a positive between May and November. “Many viruses stimulate the further production of antibodies when there is a contact,” Lavezzo added. “What we saw here with Covid is that a contact can more than double the antibodies you already have and that really extends the time you are protected.
“What we don’t know is whether during that brief, minor contagion, you become contagious.”
The good news is that Lavezzo believes that the hike in antibodies triggered by a fresh contact will work not only for people who have had Covid-19, but also for those who have been vaccinated, meaning that the protection offered by a jab may be strengthened and stretched out if the recipient comes into contact with a positive case.
Raffaela Frasson, 53, who works at Vo’ town hall and is one of the super-immune cases, has a good idea where she had the contact that stimulated her antibody count. “An office colleague had it in October and ended up in hospital,” she said. “I knew I already had antibodies thanks to having had Covid back in February so I may have been careless around him.”
Now she is feeling confident, knowing that the contact may have boosted her immunity even further. “My husband has bought a Ducati motorbike and we are going for trips the moment Covid is over,” she said.
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Tosetto, meanwhile, has been a key protagonist in Italy’s Covid-19 nightmare since the start. Her husband Renato Turetta, 67, a retired plumber, was playing cards in a Vo’ café on February 9 as out-of-towners stopped in to watch a football match on television.
His partner in the card game was Adriano Trevisan, 77, who is thought to have caught Covid-19 that night before dying 12 days later, becoming Europe’s first victim, prompting Vo’s lockdown and signalling the arrival of the virus on the continent.
Turetta caught it too and was dead by March 10, but not before infecting his wife. “I had a 40-degree fever and slept for two days. It was bad,” she told The Times, her eyes watering. “It took me two weeks to recover and then I had to think of my husband, who was in hospital before he died.
“My husband was a fit man and good company. I never imagined such a horrible thing could happen and only now am I starting to take stock. But if one life is lost, I hope this research we all took part it can save a life. We must move on and that is why I took part.”
After joining the hundreds of locals who dutifully queued up at the local school over the past 12 months for repeated swabs and blood tests, Tosetto knows that she is brimming with antibodies. She pulled out her phone to show a message from the University of Padua experts telling her that she has one of the highest antibody counts they have seen. “If it’s a choice between me or my daughter going to the shops, I will be the one to go,” she said.
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Her positivity is typical of townsfolk, added the mayor Giuliano Martini, 63. “Vo’ is a halfway point between Padua and Vincenza and it lacked the privileges of places closer to the big towns, which has always made locals fight harder for things.”
Surrounded by wooded hills and vineyards, Vo’ was once an outpost of Venice, supplying agricultural produce to the lagoon city by boat along rivers and canals, and local quarries supplied the stone that built St Mark’s Square.
Last year, after Vo’s fortnight sealed off from the rest of Italy, the army barricades came down when the whole of the country went into a ten-week lockdown on March 9. Then, as Italy emerged from its first wave, the hardiness of the locals was put to the test. “By that point we had a reputation as being ‘untori’ — the spreaders of disease. No one visited before June and local wine was sent back,” Martini, the mayor, who doubles as the town’s chemist, said.
“You would go to a nearby town and people would say ‘What are you doing here?’ So it’s been satisfying to have fewer cases in the second and third waves than our neighbours.”
No one is sure how Covid arrived in Vo’. Outsiders arrived for the packed night watching football in the café on February 9, but Erika Polito, 42, a town councillor who works at Martini’s pharmacy, said she was already seeing an unusually high number of pneumonia cases as early as November 2019.
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She added that locals found it hard to fathom the prejudice they faced as Vo’s fame spread. “During our two weeks sealed off we were calmer and felt more protected than people outside because we were all being tested. The fear started when the barricades came down and we worried people would come in and infect us.”
Polito, who avoided catching the virus, said residents of Vo’ were “all a bit stronger” after what they had been through. “Nevertheless, I wouldn’t mind having some of those antibodies.”
