Serosurvey for SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors in Wuhan, China from September to December 2019.

Le Chang; Lei Zhao; Yan Xiao; Tingting XU; Lan Chen; Yan Cai; Xiaojing Dong; Conghui Wang; Xia Xiao; Lili Ren; Lunan Wang

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Serosurvey for SARS-CoV-2 among blood donors in Wuhan, China from September to December 2019.

Author: Le CHANG ¹ ; Lei ZHAO ² ; Yan XIAO ³ ; Tingting XU ² ; Lan CHEN ³ ; Yan CAI ⁴ ; Xiaojing DONG ³ ; Conghui WANG ³ ; Xia XIAO ³ ; Lili REN ³ ; Lunan WANG ¹
Author Information

1. National Center for Clinical Laboratories, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Institute of Geriatric Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China.
2. Department of Laboratory, Wuhan Blood Center, Wuhan 430030, China.
3. National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China Key Laboratory of Systems Biology of Pathogens, Institute of Pathogen Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100730, China.
4. Department of Quality Control, Wuhan Blood Center, Wuhan 430030, China.
Publication Type:Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Keywords: blood donors; coronavirus disease 2019; neutralizing antibodies; seroprevalence; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
MeSH: Humans; Antibodies, Viral; Blood Donors; China/epidemiology*; COVID-19/immunology*; Immunoglobulin G; Immunoglobulin M; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2
From: Protein & Cell 2023;14(1):28-36
CountryChina
Language:English
Abstract: The emerging of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused COVID-19 pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 was reported at early December in 2019 in Wuhan City, China. To examine specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in biological samples before December 2019 would give clues when the epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 might start to circulate in populations. We obtained all 88,517 plasmas from 76,844 blood donors in Wuhan between 1 September and 31 December 2019. We first evaluated the pan-immunoglobin (pan-Ig) against SARS-CoV-2 in 43,850 samples from 32,484 blood donors with suitable sample quality and enough volume. Two hundred and sixty-four samples from 213 donors were pan-Ig reactive, then further tested IgG and IgM, and validated by neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Two hundred and thirteen samples (from 175 donors) were only pan-Ig reactive, 8 (from 4 donors) were pan-Ig and IgG reactive, and 43 (from 34 donors) were pan-Ig and IgM reactive. Microneutralization assay showed all negative results. In addition, 213 screened reactive donors were analyzed and did not show obviously temporal or regional tendency, but the distribution of age showed a difference compared with all tested donors. Then we reviewed SARS-CoV-2 antibody results from these donors who donated several times from September 2019 to June 2020, partly tested in a previous published study, no one was found a significant increase in S/CO of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Our findings showed no SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies existing among blood donors in Wuhan, China before 2020, indicating no evidence of transmission of COVID-19 before December 2019 in Wuhan, China.