[ti:Study Suggests People Who Got COVID-19 Protected for Months] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]People who have had COVID-19 [00:03.16]are unlikely to get the disease again [00:06.64]for at least six months after their first infection, [00:11.36]new research suggests. [00:14.28]Researchers studied 12,219 British healthcare workers [00:22.16]involved in treating people infected with the new coronavirus. [00:29.36]COVID-19 is the disease caused by that virus. [00:35.76]The findings could be important for tens of millions of people worldwide [00:42.04]who have been infected, researchers at the University of Oxford said. [00:49.32]“This is really good news, because we can be confident that, [00:54.48]at least in the short term, most people who get COVID-19 [00:59.84]won’t get it again,” said David Eyre. [01:04.52]He was one of the leaders of the study. [01:07.96]Rare cases of re-infection had caused concern [01:13.00]that immunity from the virus might not last [01:16.76]and that recovered patients might get sick again. [01:22.28]But the results of the study suggest cases [01:26.72]of reinfection are likely to remain extremely rare. [01:33.04]The study was carried out on healthcare workers [01:37.08]who are among those at highest risk of getting COVID-19. [01:44.12]“Being infected with COVID-19 does offer protection against re-infection [01:51.84]for most people for at least six months,” Eyre said. “ [01:57.92]We found no new symptomatic infections” [02:02.08]in any of the workers who had tested positive for antibodies. [02:08.80]The study is part of a major employee testing program. [02:15.32]It covered a 30-week period between April and November 2020. [02:22.72]The results have not yet been studied and confirmed by other scientists [02:29.20]but were published early on the website MedRxiv. [02:34.72]During the study, 89 of 11,052 healthcare workers [02:42.36]without antibodies got a new infection with symptoms. [02:48.80]However, none of the 1,246 workers [02:55.12]with antibodies got a symptomatic infection. [03:00.32]The workers with antibodies were also less likely [03:06.36]to test positive for COVID-19 without symptoms, the researchers said. [03:13.64]Seventy-six of them without antibodies tested positive, [03:18.32]compared to three with antibodies. [03:22.76]Those three are all well and did not get COVID-19 symptoms, they added. [03:31.32]Eyre told Reuters news agency that the researchers [03:36.24]would keep watching the workers carefully “to see how long protection lasts.” [03:42.76]And they will watch to see whether [03:46.20]an earlier infection affects the severity of a new infection. [03:52.48]I’m Alice Bryant. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM